Fireshy Firefly
by xthrenody
Summary: Hermione didn't know his name then and it doesn't matter now; Harry smoked pain when he lit his cigarette; Ron found solace in whiskey because the pounding in his head was preferable to the  parting of his soul; Severus wanted to want nothing at all.
1. Introduction

Something that I find curious is that few authors that I have read account for the psychological stress and turmoil involved in war; even JRK takes her epilogue nearly two decades from the end of the war. She has left a lot to our imaginations about _how_ these characters come to terms with their losses and their actions, and how they were able to resume what we can only assume is a 'normal' life – marriage, children, the next generation of Hogwarts students. How did they get there? The portrayals of these characters will not be sunshine and daisies, simply because I feel it is highly unrealistic that they maintain childish innocence and enthusiasm when they must fight, take lives, and suffer losses in this war.

I am not forcing you to read this, nor am I asking that you agree with my opinion or the viewpoints expressed in…whatever this might become. I do, however, look forward to your own opinions, and hope that you will share them with me. Additionally, I won't promise a strict update schedule because my own is highly volatile at the moment. I apologize if this does not suit you, and invite you to wait a few weeks and read several chapters at one time. If this is familiar to you, you aren't crazy :) Life interfered, and I took an unintentional year-long hiatus, and I cannot remember the login to my original account. That being said, I have done a LOT of editing to the original material. I think it flows better now, explains more, and leaves fewer holes.

I have an outline, and I know where I want this to end, but I've never done this before. This is going to be a monstrosity and I'm half-terrified. I'm bending canon to my will, taking pieces and making someone else's world my own. That being said, anything you recognize surely isn't mine; I'm sitting in JKR's sandbox, and I promise to return the toys that I play with.

Love always,  
**Threnody**.

* * *

**Introduction  
**

Some girls talk about losing their virginity the way they talk about the weather. Hermione Granger lost quills and her temper, and earrings when she bothered to wear them. She didn't lose her virginity. She fucking threw it. She "lost" her innocence when she took a man's life, and she'd be damned if she "lost" her virginity, too.

She didn't know his name; it didn't matter then, and it doesn't matter now. He had Apparated into Headquarters immediately following their – _her – _battle with a soldier's stride, and spoken to Kingsley behind closed doors. From a hushed conversations and the way that he moaned beneath her, she thought he might have been American. He wasn't much taller than she was, but he was lean and his body was hard, and when she pushed him against the wall, he didn't mind that a murderer's hands pressed against his trachea made it hard to breathe. He didn't mind that blood was caking under her fingernails and that as it dried, it crumbled against his skin. Mud knotted her hair and something between hate and anguish hazed her eyes. She was feral that night, and when he woke, the only evidence of her existence was what she left behind: bruises on his throat, welts on his back, and something inhuman that came from her throat and still rang in his ears.


	2. One

Later – days, weeks, hours, – _they_ would talk. Someone should have been there. Someone should have watched her. Someone should have taken care of her, made sure she was okay. In a perfect world, someone wouldn't have had to. In that world, she'd be lying on the floor of Gryffindor Tower barricaded by textbooks and warmed by the fire. Her hair would fall into her eyes and she'd tuck it behind her ear impatiently as she glared at the boys, but there would be mirth lurking behind the disapproval in her eyes.

This world wasn't perfect. This world was fucking real.

In the beginning, she'd been aware of the duration of the war… but days became weeks, and time was meaningless. The Order was ragged, handicapped, tired. It was trial-by-fire, and if you lived, you dealt with whatever happened because someone else died for you that night, and you had to fight the next day in their place and for their memory. In the beginning, she would sit with them when they came home from missions. Harry lit his pain on fire and smoked it with the nicotine in his cigarettes; Ron found solace in cheap whiskey because pounding in his head distracted him from the parting of his soul.

_She shouldn't have been there_. She was an amateur healer, she was soft hands and comfort when someone else came home. This battle hadn't gone as planned. Violently surprised and desperately outnumbered, the plea for help from Harry's stag echoed through Headquarters. Kingsley put his head in his hands and told Hermione to go. He could see in her eyes that she was terrified but grimly resolute, and in the faint crack of her Apparation, he told her he was sorry. She hadn't heard - he knew this - but poorly-timed apologies made it harder for him to fall asleep at night, and he knew he deserved it because he would wake up in the morning and do the same thing again.

She appeared in a battle where spells hit the ground almost as thick as the rain. She caught a flash of green from the corner of her eye and felt the air crushed from her lungs as Ron covered her, pressed her to the earth. The curse struck wildflowers in a magnificent explosion of sparks and petals, and as she fought for breath he rolled and yanked her behind what remained of an oak tree. There wasn't time to ascertain if she was okay – her heaving chest assured him that she was breathing and right then, it had to be enough, and he left her to rejoin the fight.

On her feet, she trembled and adrenaline surged, and she leapt into the crossfire with curses and hexes spat awkwardly from her tongue and her wand. Bill Weasley saw this and he roared _RETREAT_ and they did. She moved forward to grasp a still-warm hand from the mud and raked her eyes across the battlefield. From the Death Eater side there was a victory shout, and Hermione locked eyes with a face behind a mask. His lips twitched and his wand flashed—and then it fell because it's owner fell, and Hermione's heart stopped beating, and her stomach heaved, and then Harry caught her hand and she was yanked in Apparation even as she vomited.

Remnants of potato and cabbage littered the lawn of Grimmauld Place as she retched again until her stomach ached and her throat burned. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand (_murderer's hand_) and heaved again before she stumbled up the stairs. Bill, Ron, Seamus, Harry, Lavender, Pansy, Colin, Luna, and Remus, who carried the body of Mundungus Fletcher. They were bruised, battered, bloody, broken, they were vacant eyes and pain. It was a mark of the state of the Order of the Phoenix that they didn't notice (_care?_) when Hermione didn't follow them into the makeshift hospital room.

Her heartbeat hurt her chest, and the echoes of someone else's scream hurt her ears, but she didn't feel the door frame knock against her shoulder when she stopped to catch a breath, a murderer's hand pressing against her ribs where Ron had crushed her to the ground. She shook her head and swept her muddy hair into a knot held together by her wand. By chance, Kingsley's office was on the way to her room. His door opened and the foreign man turned to walk away. She let him take five paces before she shoved him against the wall. She was small, but she was fire and ice and pain and raw, and she growled as she drove into his body with her hands on his throat. He could have thrown her away (_maybe_), but he didn't fight her, and she lifted one hand and yanked his hair and his lips crashed on hers and she growled and he threw them both into someone else's room.

She drew her wand from her hair and threw silencing and locking spells at the door. She was rough and she was cruel, but he didn't mind when she drew blood from his back or left handprints over his trachea. He didn't know that he was her first, or that she lost her innocence when she took a life, or that she had chosen to throw the last of it away before she could "lose" her virginity too.

She came, and then he did, and he groaned and sank into the bed. They were still - she was rigid and unfeeling, and he was boneless in his afterglow. While he slept, she dressed and left him, returning her wand to the knot in her hair.

Somewhere below her, Harry sat with Ron on the back porch and threw his third cigarette into the mud. He smoked one cigarette for every life he took, and then he smoked for himself until his hands quit shaking. Ron drank straight from the bottle, and neither had to speak. It was eerie and it was sad, the grace with which they held their vigil - the kind of grace that is only achieved through hours, days, weeks, and sometimes years of repetitive motions. Harry took a deep breath and he lit a fourth and the fog began to lift from his mind.

"Hermione,"

and his voice cracked, and something flickered in Ron's eyes.


	3. Two

15 November 1998

* * *

She shut the door to the room gently in stark contrast to the way she threw it open. The screams and yells and sounds of curses hitting bodies still echoed in her head, but over it, she could hear little things again for the first time since she Apparated to the battlefield. With a start, she realized she could differentiate between the shades of brown in the wood of the floor. She focused on the colors and the sound of Luna's laugh, and her heartbeat slowed and her breathing steadied. She lifted her chin and squared her shoulders as she moved through the corridor on the way to her room. This door she opened slowly and shut quietly, but the spells she cast to ward it were much more intricate than those on the door she left behind.

_I need a shower._

She shed her robes and left them on the floor with a carelessness that would have appalled her a year ago and didn't phase her now. She cranked the shower knob as far as it would go and turned away, pressing her forehead against the cool surface of the bathroom mirror. The mirror coughed, perhaps indignantly, but she had never enjoyed a mirror that could speak and had long since hexed the power of words from this one. Drawing back, she examined her reflection and she tried to find evidence on her face to create a time line for the war. Today she saw flecks of dirt and streaks from the rain, empty eyes with dark circles, chapped lips, and she was paler than when she woke up this morning… but there were no horns, no glowing sign that flashed _MURDERER!_, no missing pieces that reflected what she had lost. The air got heavier as the water got hotter and she turned away from the mirror, welcoming the suffocation of the steam.

She climbed into the shower and hissed as the heat stung her skin to an angry red, and she gritted her teeth but didn't move as the water turned brown before it swirled down the drain. Eight minutes, two hours, the passage of time was irrelevant in her haven of searing water and too much soap and shampoo. The bathroom was quiet, familiar, _safe_, and the scent of blackberries and vanilla was a balm to heal the rift in her heart. She closed her eyes and let the water flog shoulders that were raw from her scrubbing and still tense from the fight as battles continued to rage in her mind.

_I killed a man. No, I killed a Death Eater. He was a Death Eater first, a man second, the same way I am a mudblood first and a woman second. No. He was a man. I will _not_ think like them. He was a man, a human being, he was someone's son, maybe brother, maybe father, maybe a husband or lover. He was a man who decided that his desires, wishes, dreams, and beliefs were important enough to risk his life for. I can respect that. I made that decision too. I decided that my desires, wishes, dreams, and beliefs were important enough for me to risk my life for. I never thought to take my soul into account, though... We never imagined it would be like this._

In a Muggle house, with a non-magical shower, she might have stayed long past the point where hot water fails if only to see how long it would take before she could feel the cold pass through her skin, cool her blood, and settle in her bones. For better or worse though, she was in a magical house, with a magical shower, and water simply didn't run cold.

_I killed him. I really killed someone... I had to. It's not okay but Merlin help me, I had to, because I'm only seventeen and I'm not ready to die just yet. _

She was startled by the sound of laughter and she flung herself against the side of the shower in a moment of blind terror. The laughter didn't stop and her shoulders shook, and then she realized it was coming from her own lips. She didn't know why she was laughing, but she couldn't stop, and her knees gave way when the colors in her world ran together and lines ceased to separate one object from the next. She kept laughing even as she hit the shower knob and stepped out, and she kept laughing as she fell into a dizzy heap on the floor. She laughed until her chest hurt and she laughed as she cried tears that might have been any combination of grief, anger, shock, guilt, and fear. She didn't know when it started and she didn't know when it ended, but she wiped her eyes and stood, and when she opened the bathroom door, she was calm.

She returned to her room and dressed in plaid pajama pants and a long sleeved shirt before turning her attention to the clothes still strung out across the floor. She Vanished her socks without much consideration; they were old, closer to grey than white and the start of a hole in the heel. Her shirt was relatively unscathed, but the hems of her pants were caked in dead grass and mud and what might have been blood. A quick flick of her wand brought them to few shades lighter than their former glory, but they were clean and dry and she laid down her wand and hung them carefully by hand in her closet, a small gesture of order in a world of bedlam. She bent to retrieve her robes and curled her lip in distaste as the smell of smoke and rain and blood and death hit her nose and she dropped them like they burned her fingers. Reaching for her wand,

"_Incendio!" _

because right then, at that moment in time, the stains on the fabric were stains on her soul. They wouldn't have come clean, and vanishing them just wasn't enough.


	4. Three

**15 November 1998**

* * *

Hermione was quiet as she bent to gather her cat, but he was bad tempered ginger and spite, and she yelped as he drew his claws against the back of her hands.

"Damn it, beast, I need you."

Crookshanks curled into a tighter ball and looked pointedly at her door. She couldn't begin to fathom the source of his irritation - it might have been the constant rotation of bodies in and out of Grimmauld Place, and it might have been the rain that kept him inside the house - but he was sullen and he wanted nothing to do with her. For a moment she was bitterly angry, but she was too fragile to maintain feeling something that strong. Across the hall someone dropped a cardboard box and the thud it made against the hardwood floors sounded too much like someone falling to the ground, and she fled from her room with wet hair and pajama pants that dragged on the floor suddenly desperate to not be alone.

She met them on the porch and Harry threw a half-smoked cigarette into the mud while Ron lurched unsteadily to his feet. He drank enough whiskey to kill a hippogriff, but he drank so much so often that on nights like this one, he could still function. Ron was closest to her and she clung to him. He tangled his hands in the back of her shirt and when his fingers touched her skin, they sparked, and she was jolted, and she cried.

He held her like that day didn't matter, and tomorrow wouldn't either. He held her like a father holds his daughter when she wakes up in the night. He held her like a man who holds a woman he has loved for all his life. She heard Harry's voice, more sound than words, and he held her too, like everything would be okay.

Minutes (_hours_?) fell away as they stood together in their solitude. Slowly, Hermione's shoulders quit shaking and Ron's fingers lost their death grip on her shirt. Harry let her go.

They could have said things like I'm sorry, it's okay, you did what you have to, the end justifies the means, time heals all wounds… but those were empty sentiments at best and blatant lies at worst, and they all knew it. It was hard to learn that sometimes words just get in the way, but War was a harsh teacher and they'd all learned that lesson quickly. Hermione turned her lips up in a brief half-smile when Ron lifted an eyebrow and stared hard at the bruise on her neck.

"What is that?"

"Cheap whiskey and nicotine." Her voice was rough and she met his frown with stiff shoulders and defiant eyes.

Maybe it was the alcohol that made him slump or sway just a bit as he sat down again; maybe it was more than that. If he were disappointed, he didn't say anything and if he were hurt, he didn't show it. Harry's eyes flickered from Ron to Hermione, and then back again. Ron shrugged almost imperceptibly and raised his bottle to her. In his salute she read his understanding and when Harry pulled out another cigarette, she knew he understood too. Some of the tension left her shoulders as she leaned against the rail. Even from the side they could see fire in her eyes, and they relaxed a little more knowing she'd make it through the night and maybe, someday she could even be okay.

Their tentative peace was broken as a second Order team limped through the doors. Tonks was bleeding but her hair was magenta, her eyes were bright, and all three members of the team she lead were more than just alive - they were animated. They were loud, but it was beautiful, because they were sound of victory, and Hermione didn't think she could ever grow tired of it. She gave a half-wave to the boys and left them on the porch to join Madam Pomfrey in healing superficial injuries.

"Off," in reference to Tonks' shirt. She was abrupt, brief at best, but she wasn't unkind and Tonks had been there one too many times to take offense behind the medical screen. Hermione cleaned the blood from the Auror's shoulder but she hesitated as her wand hovered to staunch the flow and cleanse the incision.

For a moment she froze. _YOU KNOW THIS. You have done this every day for months. This is elementary. This is simple. This is textbook, this is easy. This is hypocrisy. I killed someone. I can't take lives and save others. I can't. I can't. I can. I have to. _And she took a deep breath and stopped the bleeding, and then performed a charm to prevent infection as she knit the skin back together with such care that it wouldn't leave a scar. Tonks kept talking and never noticed the conflict written in the lines between Hermione's eyes.

"..Avery, well, the bastard fought to the death and tried to take me with him." She gestured to her shoulder. "Eddie Carmichael and Zacharias Smith decided to live a few more days, and they're being held at Azkaban. We interrupted the attack on the Creeveys. Got there in time, they're shaken up but fine. They've already been moved."

Hermione nodded, smiled her congratulations, and was quite nearly trampled when Tonks tripped over a bump in the rug and scrambled to keep her feet in her haste to make the official report. Madam Pomfrey bore witness to the event and saw the quick spasm of pain flash across Hermione's eyes when Tonks' elbow collided with her unhealed ribs. With a quick admonishment for Charlie and the rest of the team to rest, she was at Hermione's side with a gentle touch of her wand and a vial of Dreamless Sleep.

"Sit, Miss Granger, before you become my patient again."

Wordlessly, Hermione complied and took the vial, rolling it between her fingers and staring at silhouettes beyond the screen.

"I know you know how to heal a simple bruise. Tonks didn't notice, but I saw you hesitate before you healed an injury you have fixed nearly every day of this wretched war. What happened?"

"I killed someone."

Poppy softened, and she drew the haunted girl into embrace. For a long moment Hermione was unyielding, but when the stiffness broke and she clung to the Mediwitch with all the desperation of a drowning man thrown a life preserver.

"Hermione, I can't tell you everything will be okay, or that it won't happen again. It wasn't right for you to have been thrown into combat like that, but even Healers are soldiers, love - we have our orders, too. Today yours took you into battle, and when you came home, those same orders brought a member of the Order of the Phoenix to you to heal. Until you are called elsewhere, I need you here - you know that. Your hands are good, your hands are gentle, and your hands are healing hands. Events of today do not change that, Hermione. Do not forget that. Take this tonight, and only tonight. Tomorrow is another day."

And she closed Hermione's fingers around the vial. She nodded, sliding from the table in the makeshift hospital room, and as she turned to leave, she paused.

"..thank you."

It was enough as she crawled up the stairs to her room. She downed the potion with a savage thirst, and for a few hours, she ceased to exist, and it was wonderful.

* * *

I just wanted to take a brief moment and say thank you to everyone leaving reviews, favoriting the story, favoriting me as the author (!), setting Fireshy up for alerts - your kindness and encouragement is blowing me away. This is amazing to me, and I truly appreciate it. I respond to every review that I can - if you leave an anonymous review but desire a response and are comfortable leaving an email - I'd love to be able to thank you personally. That there are people that have found me after an entire YEAR who are still following the story is absolutely incredible to me, and I cannot thank you enough. That so many new people have found this story is so exciting. I really hope that I don't disappoint any of you.

Love always,  
**xThrenody**


	5. Four

Disclaimer: Nothing recognizable is mine :)

* * *

**16 November 1998**

**

* * *

**

Grimmauld Place never slept. The flurry of activity was not born from constant vigilance, but rather, by something as simple as necessity. Wards. Strategy. Burials. Injury. Training. Allocating money and stretching Galleons much farther than any of them had fathomed.

At 3:24 that morning, Kingsley Shacklebolt sat at his desk. His floor was littered with discarded parchment and broken quills, and in the corner of the office, under the dent in the wall, were fragments of ceramic instead of an oversized coffee mug. His shoulders were bent and his hands cradled his head, though they had started to slip from the sweat. He was tired, scared, angry, and ultimately desperate, and he prayed to whoever - whatever - might be listening.

_Merlin, Godric, Salazar, Rowena, Helga, God, Allah, Buddha, get us all through one more day. _

But his wartime existence had robbed him of faith, and he sighed heavily and straightened in his chair. He pulled a fresh sheet of parchment from the drawer and resumed his diagrams and planning, trying to create something from nothing. In a magical world, it should have been easy.

It wasn't.

* * *

At 3:24 that morning, Alastor Moody paced in front of his door. His Sneak-O-Scope shrilled because it always shrilled, and his Foe Glass was alive with shadows so corporeal he swore he could feel their breath when he stared at the whites of his eyes. They called him Mad-Eye, and it wasn't complimentary. He didn't mind. He might have been mad, but he was still alive, and that was more than could be said for the people he had killed. He was bitter and grizzled, and he was horribly disfigured. His leg seemed a small price to pay for justice though, and he truly felt his magical eye was an improvement over the one he had been born with.

Mad-Eye Moody paced in circles in front of his door and wished the adrenaline in his blood would dissipate so he could sleep -really sleep- because he hadn't been able to really sleep in more than twenty years.

* * *

At 3:24 that morning, Luna Lovegood sat at her windowsill and searched for stars between the clouds. Her window was open, and she had charmed it so that the rain fell straight instead of inside her room. Her nails tapped lightly on a tarnished silver bell as she drummed out a rhythm for Scottish Pixies, hoping that it might bring light to their life as she had found in hers. In a world fractured by conflict, Luna was serene. Maybe she shouldn't have been - her father's body had been deposited in front of Hogwarts only two months ago. He was captured by Death Eaters in an attempt to locate his wraithlike daughter. Luna's father's love prevailed for her then and he took her secrets with him to his grave.

Just like it did with the others, the war stole away with her innocence… but in the wake of her pain, her friends drew together tightly, desperate to protect her, desperate to protect each other. She watched as the war and their loss brought people closer together. The war united them like nothing else could have ever done, and though she mourned the loss of her father, there were few things Luna held closer to her heart than her friends.

* * *

At 3:24 that morning, Severus Snape flung open the front door with such a bang that the windows rattled. Kingsley jumped. Luna smiled and put away her bell and slipped between the sheets. With a yell, Moody sent a jet of red light careening towards the intruder. Severus deflected it, and it shattered a lamp on his left.

"That was highly unnecessary, you deranged old man. You keyed the wards yourself, and they change every four hours and eighteen minutes. This location is Secret-Kept. It is the headquarters of the Order of the Phoenix. Surely this is sufficient, Alastor?"

"The Dark Mark on your arm is one of the reasons the wards change every four hours and eighteen minutes. If I could manage it, they'd change every two!"

"How very…touching that the sacrifice of my soul means so little to you. And admirable, really, that you think so highly of Dumbledore." His voice was like black velvet and colder than a winter frost. The smooth barb pertaining to Dumbledore served to incense Moody, and his face darkened abruptly. With a strangled motion he started to speak when a quick _pop! _diverted the' attention of both men to Madam Pomfrey.

"Enough, gentlemen. Alastor, your wards are due to change in twelve minutes. Severus, hospital wing - room, rather." With her hands on her hips, she was a force to be reckoned with, and she marched from the room with perfect certainty that she would, indeed, be followed. She was not disappointed, and with his opponent somewhat forcibly taken from him, Moody muttered and stomped back to his room to prepare the next change to the wards.

Constant vigilance.

Constant vigilance.

Constant vigilance.

* * *

"You. Bed. Now. Lie down. And do remove the Glamour when you remove your robes, Severus. I can only help you as much as you let me." She sighed and cast worried eyes from his head to his toes. Behind the privacy of locked doors, he allowed himself his first grimace since arriving, and he moved gingerly, carefully bracing each joint - toes, ankles, knees, hips - as he settled himself on the bed. He winced as he fought the silver fastening on his cloak with stiff fingers and muscles that still jumped beneath his skin. He shivered a bit, pulling the white sheet over his narrow hips.

"He started it, Poppy."

She smiled then, turning back to her patient and handing him a potion that smoked faintly around the edges.

"Tremors from the Cruciatus first, but I am sure you were as innocent as the day you were born."

"Of course."

A ghost of a smile flickered across his lips as she flitted around him, gentle pokes and prods from her wand repairing the damage to his body. Surface wounds were easy, and as she closed shallow cuts and smoothed bruises from his pale skin, she tried not to think of how they formed. They were too shallow and too insubstantial to have been intentional injuries… they were where he damaged his own body when he fell and flailed from Cruciatus. When she straightened and reset the bones in his wrist, he hissed, and it was by sheer force of will that he didn't jerk away from her and re-fracture them.

"Gentle, woman!"

"Hush, Severus. Now, do us all a favor and rest, won't you? Merlin knows you're less pleasant than usual when you're in pain."

He scowled and muttered something that sounded roughly like "interfering" or possibly "meddling", but he rose gingerly and moved to his own quarters. She frowned. He shouldn't have moved so soon after taking the potion, but it was a longstanding argument between them, and it was one she never won. Severus wouldn't rest, let alone sleep, unless he was behind his own doors… doors she had carefully arranged to be a mere six steps from the hospital room. Given Moody's reaction to him, she sighed, and decided that traveling those six steps was the lesser of two evils.

* * *

At 3:24 that morning, Hermione Granger turned over in her bed, lost in a blissful, dreamless sleep where she failed to exist in this world.

* * *

Dialogue is the bane of my existence - have I butchered it horribly?

I'm anticipating a bit of controversy regarding the Snape-Pomfrey exchange, and I'd like to explain a bit here. With his role as a double (quadruple?) agent, and the rather sadistic demeanor of Voldemort, I think it stands to reason that Snape has been coming to Poppy for many, many years to let her put him back together. By extension, I think it's logical that they have forged a special relationship, one where he can let down his guard a bit, relax, perhaps even confide things such as pain to her. Now, would he ever admit this? I think he'd rather die.

Thank you so much to my reviewers- Her Royal Goddess, disposable-view, Looney Lovey, and heartmom88. You are too kind 3

Love always,  
**Threnody**


	6. Five

**16 November 1998.

* * *

**

Grim silence woke her nearly thirteen hours later and she wondered if this was what it felt like to be run over by Abraxons. Silence meant Monday. Silence meant Kingsley was at the Ministry, and that Luna had been taken back to school. Silence meant at least two teams had been sent on missions. Silence meant that most, if not all, of the Weasleys had been dispatched on at least one of those teams. Experience told her that silence meant that at least one person was gong to come back injured. She wondered if hoping for injury made her a terrible person, but pain was better than death.

She moved slowly, haltingly – the muscles in her thighs and her calves were too tight to allow her a normal stride. In a brief moment of what she would later term insanity, she tried to lift her arms to wrestle her hair into some form of submission.

"_Bloody hell_." She hissed, regretting the impulse immensely as the muscles in her shoulders caught fire and _burned_. She decided then to forego Muggle clothing beneath her robes and laced her dragonhide boots with more than a little difficulty. Opening her door, she peered both ways before starting down the stairs.

_Good. Lord. Who. In their. Right. Mind. Decided. Houses. Needed. More. Than one. Level. And. That. It was. A. Good. Idea. To. Employ. The. Use of. Boxes. To get. From. One. Level. To. The. Next? _

She raged within her mind because anger was safer than grief. She didn't have to hurt and it made her feel alive… so she glowered about the abomination they called "stairs" because it was cathartic and truly, stairs didn't matter. Wizarding houses were worse than Muggle. They defied logic and reason and laws of gravity. Thirty stairs. Ordinarily, she appreciated round numbers. Ordinarily, they made her life simpler.

Today was not ordinary.

She cursed the idea behind stairs. She cursed the first man to stand on a rock to reach something beyond him. She cursed the architect of Grimmauld Place. She cursed Harry Potter for his possession of the wretched house. She cursed the Order for making it Headquarters. Thirty stabs of pain as her muscles protested stretching. Thirty opportunities for her mood to sour. By the time she reached the landing, she was quite near livid. She hobbled to the kitchen and was further displeased to see Harry slumped lazily in his chair with his legs stretched out in front of him, drinking tea as he might have if he had he spent the previous day warming the couch.

"Good morning." She was curt.

"Morning." His mood rivaled hers.

She eyed Harry's tea enviously from across the room and with a long-suffering sigh she hobbled across to set the kettle to boil. She looked away and grew distant, and when he studied her, he wondered where she went. He hoped it was good, wherever it was. Just before the kettle hissed, she took away the heat and added water to the loose tea in her mug. Proper tea cups were inadequate. She'd confiscated one of the large mugs that Kingsley drank his coffee from and even so, she needed three to function. She stirred, four times counter-clockwise, paused and watched the liquid swirl, and then reversed the flow with two quick stirs to the right. It reminded Harry of how she looked when brewing the Polyjuice Potion in their second year – a strange combination of concentration and resolve. The tea burned taste buds from her tongue and wrecked havoc down her throat… but even from the first sip, she started to come back to life.

"They sent out Ron." Ah. So this was the source of his mood.

"They're sending you again in two days. I get to stay safe here with Moody as my babysitter because he doesn't trust me to stay put."

She didn't hear his bitterness in his because she hadn't heard the second half of his words at all. Her mind convulsed as she fought to comprehend him, fought to understand. She clawed desperately at the tendrils of her sanity as panic sought to drive it away. She wasn't ready. She killed one man she didn't want to kill two. Three. More. It would be inevitable. It wasn't her, she couldn't do it, it wasn't what she wanted, it wasn't –

"Hermione, did you hear me? My job is to train you. You have two days. Calm down. Make the most of them. You need to change; we're going for a run." His voice was lacking something vital, and his eyes were stony with all the resentment of a teenaged boy. They were sullen, depthless, timeless, and right then, they were devoid of humanity.

She wasn't looking at his eyes. She didn't see the danger because her fragile hold on emotion and reality and poise slipped, and something broke inside her.

"Two days. TWO DAYS? What the hell am I to do in two days? I need time, I need to go to the library, I need to practice, I haven't done this, I'm not ready, I don't know what to do and I killed someone yesterday. I need to be able to bloody WALK. Harry, how am I going to do this? I can't do this, not in two days. I can't… I just can't. What if I'd been trained, what if I knew what to do, what if I didn't have to kill him? Why couldn't I have Apparated faster? Bill said leave. What if…Harry, please don't ask me to do this, please, not yet."

Her voice started shrill and rose even higher as her hysteria grew. Her eyes were bright with tears and terror and her chest heaved and she tried to breathe but her lungs were like the muscles in her legs. They were too tight, and she tried but she couldn't breathe. A new color of fear flecked her eyes because her lungs wouldn't inflate and a corner of her mind thought it odd that her fingers were stiff, but her eyes changed again when her knees refused to hold her weight and she slumped, slid out of her chair and Harry's Seeker reflexes weren't enough to catch her that time.

He softened though, and he sat on the cold hard wood of the kitchen floor and pulled her into his lap. Stroking her hair he berated himself for his treatment of her. She quieted, and it was by sheer force of will that she reined in control of her body and her emotions, quicker today than she had last night. Harry could feel the transformation through the thick layers of their robes, as liquid steel coursed through her veins and settled into the jut of her chin and the brace of her shoulders… and he was proud of her strength but it in a rare moment of perception, it broke his heart because he could see her losing pieces of herself.

The worst part was that she didn't seem to know.

* * *

A special thanks to TwilitLife08, Her Royal Goddess, LooneyLovey, heartmom88, SnarkySnape1313 :DD Thank you so much for your time. I'm VERY pleased at the reception of the Snape-Poppy exchange and for your compliments. Your reviews are the highlights of my day. They're inspiring, and motivating, and they make me nicer - people don't know it, but everyone I interact with, particularly at work, is grateful for the improvements to my demeanor. Thanks again :D

Yours,  
**Threnody**


	7. Six

Disclaimer: Not mine :P**

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**16 November 1998.**

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"Eat this. It's a Muscle Regeneration Agent, and no, it isn't a Wheeze. Aurors use it up to five times a week when they're training."

From his lap, she looked up at him doubtfully and fingered something that looked suspiciously like a lemon drop and reminded her of the Headmaster with a sharp prick beneath her ribs.

"Can you explain the theory behind it?"

Harry looked a bit flustered.

"Err, well, you know how when you're exercising, you tear your muscles and when they heal, they're stronger, right?"

Something like impatience flickered across her face, and he could see that she itched to correct him and further embellish the explanation and physiology of muscle-building. He continued before she had a chance to speak.

"Well, the Regeneration Agent, or RA, more or less lets you pick when you want to hurt, like at night. Regular pain potions disrupt the process of muscle building, and pretty much make the time you spent training a physical waste. They tried Muggle medicine for aches and pains, but no Muggle medication was prepared with wizards in mind and it just didn't work very well, and the ones that did help were too addictive and made people drink tons of water and do crazy things.

"There's a catch, though. Delaying the process forces it to work faster. It'll hurt more, but you can hurt at night so you can train during the day. And, the healing is cumulative which means so is the pain, so don't try to put it off too long. Most people that try to delay the pain during the week to recover during the weekend end up in a coma ."

Hermione snorted, pushing away the mental image of Gregory Goyle addicted to Percocet. She eyed the Regeneration Agent with mild trepidation and then Hermione Granger made an impulsive decision. She popped it into her mouth and almost instantly a cool tingle began on her tongue, tickled her esophagus, and spread through her body bringing instantaneous relief and extraordinary flexibility. She vowed to never, ever take muscular cooperation for granted and she tested her range of movement by pointing her toe and lifting her arms over her head.

"Give me two minutes." She pushed back from the table and took the thirty torturous stairs two at a time and blatantly rejoiced with a silly twirl when she reached the top without her legs protesting. She threw off her robe for loose pants and a t-shirt, and exchanged her boots for trainers, and she bolted down the stairs again. Mrs. Black sneered as Hermione skidded past, and she muttered of filth and coarse manners because ladies did not run, ever, but especially in a house, but what more could she expect from a mudblood. Hermione ignored her, and turned her eyes to Harry expectantly.

"Train me."

She gave him a brave sort of smile, the kind that lifted her lips and crinkled the skin around eyes that didn't sparkle. He didn't notice, or maybe he chose not to, and he provided her two bands with which to secure her wand to her forearm so she'd have it when she ran. He stretched, and she followed his lead. Words weren't needed when they left the yard, and Harry set a brisk pace along a carefully planned, protected, enchanted trail.

Three minutes later her chest hurt and her lungs burned. Her breathing was ragged, and she wanted to quit. He increased the pace.

Five minutes later her mouth was torn between dry and drooling and her throat ached, and she wanted to kill him. He increased the pace.

Seven minutes later her legs were trembling and her arms felt like lead, dragging her, slowing her down and for the second day in a row, she couldn't breathe, and instead of Harry's early demise, she wished for her own. Whether it was divine intervention or an act of mercy, Harry slowed to a quick walk after fifteen minutes. She stopped all together with her hands on her knees and tried to force oxygen into her lungs, and she nearly fell when he grabbed her arm and hauled her forward.

"Put your hands on your head." The bastard wasn't even winded. Had she any breath left at all, she would have yelled, snapped, or even spoken exactly what she thought of him, of running, and of the Order of the Phoenix. But she was gasping for air and she couldn't even whisper her protest. She was mutinous, and she very seriously considered the ramifications of murdering the Wizarding world's Chosen One with a curse to his back.

He seemed to know because he turned a quick circle and hollered "DOWN," and he dove. Preoccupied with his assassination, she wasn't as quick as she was, and he threw a _Stupefy_ that should have missed because she should have already dropped. She hadn't, though, and she was frozen with a new surge of violence in her eyes. He released her and she tumbled, landing awkwardly and scraping the palms of her hands.

"What in the _hell_ was that for, Harry?" Her voice was little more than a whisper but it was far from kind.

"You are training for combat. If your commander gives and order, you act. You don't think, you don't hesitate, and you don't look around to find out why. You _act_. You do it. Death Eaters don't fight with Stupefy, Hermione." Like her, Harry didn't raise his voice, but he was livid and the words fell like ice from his tongue. He was condescending and cruel, and for a moment she looked as though he had slapped her, and then she drew her wand but Harry had already cast _Rictusempra_ and she fumbled with a shield charm. It held – barely – and she shouted _Tarantallegra_. He didn't bother to block it. Instead, he dove and _Furnunculus_ shot from his wand. It struck her in the shoulder and she howled, something fierce and inhuman and the dynamics of their duel changed when she pointed her wand and cast _Relashio_, and then _Everte__Statum_ in quick succession. His eyes widened and he shouted _PROTEGO_ and the spell bounced off his shield and rebounded back to her. She was unprepared and it struck her in the chest and she flew like a ragdoll until _Levicorpus_ caught her ankle with a flash of white light, and he stalled her wild flight and lowered her more gently back to the ground.

"Come on. We're going for a run." And he set off again though her arms and legs were still tangled and she hadn't risen from the grass. She shook from adrenaline and from the boils in her shoulder. She shook from rage and shock and exhaustion and something far beyond the scope of dislike. She prodded her shoulder and muttered _Episkey_ and rose unsteadily to her feet.

_One foot in front of the other. Bend arms. Breathe in through your nose, out through your mouth. Foot, foot, foot, foot, breathe._

She caught up to him and he increased his pace, and when he yelled _DOWN_ out of nowhere, she threw her hands in front of her to brace for impact and started to bend her knees to fall. The curse missed her because Harry was shaken too, and because of it, his aim was half an inch off. It was not because of her reaction, and Harry twisted and broke into an all-out run that she couldn't have kept pace with even if she'd been a runner for all of her life. She hadn't had breakfast and only started her tea when Harry had led them from the house, and there was bile in her stomach and acid rising in her throat, and she choked and blinked and focused on the blurred image of a black-haired boy – no, _man_ – and she put one foot in front of the other and struggled to follow him.

From a distance, she heard _DOWN, _and she was only too happy to fall to the earth and cling to a small shoot of grass like it would save her life. Above her head, the red of Harry's _Stupefy_ struck a tree where her hips had been a fraction of a second earlier. It was a small victory, and she would have smiled if she could, but all she could do was lay still in the grass for three magical seconds of what passed for paradise before Harry rolled to his feet.

This time he was kinder, and he offered her his hand. Hers was slick with sweat and dirt, and their grasp slipped the first time. He took both hands then and hauled her to her feet. For the last half-mile back to Grimmauld Place, they walked slowly, and gradually the roar in her ears subsided and she could hear the easy rhythm of her breath.

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**A/N**: In case you couldn't tell, I am a runner by necessity and not necessarily choice. I don't enjoy pain, and I really don't enjoy not being able to breathe. However, I have German Shepherds. We have a deal: we run, and in exchange, they don't eat my house. I have friends training for marathons, and I hate the world after two miles. I don't understand :D

Please leave a review - and thank you to those of you who have given a piece of your time to me, and to Fireshy.

Love always,  
**Threnody**.


	8. Seven

**16 November 1998.

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She wanted to go to the library; he told her he was better. Books had never failed her; he said that bits of parchment and ink had never _been there_. She didn't have the energy to argue, and he wouldn't have taken her answer. She surrendered.

Thus, nearly two hours later, she found herself discussing death over tea. Sheer habit kept her spine straight and her ankles crossed, though she couldn't feel her legs. She was surprised that she felt civilized and wondered if the feeling came from tea or habit. It didn't matter though, because Harry was talking, and she wasn't so proud as to ignore his experience.

"Everyone has that one spell they favor. That goes for the Order as well as Death Eaters. Bellatrix uses the Cruciatus, she likes to play with her food before she eats it. Lucius Malfoy aims to kill. Dolohov created his own, and it causes massive internal injury. I prefer Expelliarmus. Neville is particularly fond of Petrificus Totalus - he's been quite attached to it ever since you used it so effectively against him towards the end of our first year. You need to know the Death Eaters though. You also need to find something that works for you, that you are confident with, that you are flawless with, and that will let you sleep at night."

His eyes were hooded, and as she nodded, she wondered if he had ventured from his Expelliarmus before. She supposed he had, and she wondered whether she'd be able to sleep tonight. She tilted her head, pondering her own repertoire of spells. In _that_ fight, she'd gone in cold, with only classroom knowledge and an unclear vision of combat. She had fought poorly and panicked, and all she knew is that spells had left her wand. She only remembered killing a man. She shivered, clenched her fists, and forcibly returned to the present. She conjured parchment and summoned a quill as she took the words from his mouth and made them concrete.

_Expelliarmus won't work for me. Neville should be careful with Petrificus Totalus, we don't know who can do wandless magic. Unforgivable is Unforgiveable. Boils? Distracting, not necessarily dangerous. Deprimo? Perhaps strong wind could be beneficial., but it could also throw our spells off.. The Entrail-Expelling curse is out. I'm not giving them more of my humanity. Boils aren't enough. Bat-Bogey isn't enough. Hmm._

She sighed and ran a hand through the mess of curls that hung from her head in quiet chaos. She desperately wanted a shower but was afraid to dedicate the time. Harry kept talking and she still wanted the knowledge of her books. In a back corner of her mind, she began putting together a list of titles that might help. With the rest, she focused her attention on the rhythm of his voice.

"…what we know regarding Death Eater dynamics. There is the Inner Circle. Snape, Bellatrix, Lucius, Dolohov, Wormtail. Sectumsempra, Crucio, Avada Kedava, his own creation, and Wormtail usually reverts back to a rat and hides. The first four are his best fighters, his most trusted. Wormtail got there by necessity when he brought Voldemort back. Of course, Snape is his Potions Master as well.

"Bella is mad. She's dangerous, but she's mad. There isn't a method to that kind of mad. She thrives on her own pain and she lives to cause it, but her world is consumed by Him, and she comes a bit… err, more unhinged if you can keep her attention long enough to attack her relationship with him verbally.

"Words won't sway Malfoy. Generations of perfect Pureblood customs mean nothing can be said to make him bat an eye. He's not as fast as Bella, but I reckon he's a bit saner, though that isn't a good thing. He's also overconfident, and he can get careless if things don't go as planned. Be ready to move, though. He has a good aim.

"Dolohov is bad news. He's fast, he's nearly sane, but he's one-dimensional with that curse of his own creation. He doesn't like change and he doesn't do it well. Something else we've noticed is that he hates to fight in the rain, which makes Moody think he suffers from old injuries and one too many times with Cruciatus. Moody has people researching that angle.

"We don't know as much about the Outer Circle, but they're deadly, just as much as the Inner Circle because they want to _be_ the Inner Circle, and they're willing to do whatever it takes to get there. The hardest part about them is that the Outer Circle constantly changes between promotions, demotinos, and death. They do the dirty work, so they have a really high casualty rate, but they're pretty much interchangeable. There's always someone else to take the dead guy's place."

Yes, this made sense. She was intimately familiar with Dolohov; he frequented her nightmares when her mind chose to revisit the Battle of the Department of Mysteries.

Harry continued to speak as the sun fell from the sky. Watching him, she mourned the boy who died sometime in the last few months and marveled at the man in his place. The who took his place spoke articulately and authoritatively, most notably when he spoke of war and tactics. He paced when he lectured, but he was calm and he was confident, and she could hear truth in the inflections of his words. He'd fought and killed and nearly died, and these truths helped him stay alive. His voice melted into her memory in a way she knew she'd never forget, and she regretted it just a bit because someday, she knew she'd want to.

They both started as people flocked to the house, and it was only then that Hermione caught sight of the clock. 7:00 meant that Harry had talked through lunch and that day jobs were over. She didn't mind. She hadn't been hungry since she'd vomited her lunch the day before, and the thought of a public meal made her stomach twist.

"That's enough for today, I think." She nodded. She wanted books and a bath and quiet and peace, though she was ready to settle for the first three.

"Harry…when is Ron due home?" Harry's expression darkened. In a moment, the soldier vanished and gave way to a little boy who was afraid of losing his best friend. Suddenly, he didn't seem so tall and his shoulders didn't seem so broad. His face was pale and his cheekbones were too prominent. It seemed odd that his voice didn't waver, as though it didn't match the mouth that it came from.

"Three days. Kingsley hasn't owled me with the report from today. That was due at four this afternoon."

She nodded, grim and drawn.

"I'll be upstairs. Harry…the RA delays the pain for convenience. Do the Aurors have anything that accelerates the process"

He was surprised, but he was too preoccupied for surprise to steal his expression, when he spoke, he hesitated because he didn't want to answer.

"It's tightly controlled. They say it's excruciating and highly addictive. And… the longer you take it, the more it takes of your life."

"I don't have time to do this the normal way, and I can handle it. It's mind over matter, and you _know_ I can use it appropriately." There was acid in her voice and stone in her eyes and she was ashamed of the bitter residue that the words left on her tongue.

"I'll talk to Kingsley as soon as I see him." The boy was gone, again. Like the accelerant, five minutes of conversation had taken five years from his life, and it showed in new creases between his eyes and near his lips. These weren't happy lines, but it was war and you did what you had to, to stay alive.

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:D Good times. Thank you, thank you, thank you for the reviews! I'm going to try and stay on my one-a-day schedule for as long as I can, but my manager at my fun job is officially on vacation, and as assistant manager, I get all of her fun, and all of my own. It's going to be a long week, but we're starting a countdown: Only 5 more 80 hour weeks! *dancedanceDANCE*

Yours,  
**Threnody**


	9. Eight

**16 November 1998.

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She retreated to the shower and for a moment, she saw mud run into the drain and _DOWN_ roared in her ears. She dropped without thought. Her heart paused, and then leapt again, because her eyes had failed her and she couldn't breathe. She lost her vision to black and shadow, and behind her eyes she saw the savage beauty that was spellwork raked across a midnight sky. When she blinked, it was water on her shoulders and tile beneath her feet, but the water was heavy, and her knees buckled and she grabbed at the knob roughly and turned off the flow. She fought for breath through a haze of hate, and she glowered and hit the tile on the wall. She regretted it immediately…and yet she felt relief when her knuckles throbbed and a dull ache calmed the turmoil inside her head.

It was her last moment of peace.

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She had expected to see Harry waiting on her bed, kicking his feet and twirling the wand in his hand. He would have quirked a brow at her towel and turned away discreetly with heat in his cheeks. He wasn't though, and had she joined the Order for dinner, she would have known that Harry, Bill, and Remus were gone because there was a rumor of a gaunt woman with raven hair and a smile that just wasn't right. The rumor suggested that this woman had entered a shop in Diagon Alley alone, and had left with a small child, and that a young mother was in hysterics as she wept and ran and searched for her half-blood daughter.

Instead it was Snape leaning against her wall. There was frost in the glitter of his eyes and distain that dripped from the sneer on his lips, and all she could think was that it was odd to see so much tension in a posture that should have been relaxed.

"Really, Miss Granger, do you make it a habit to wander these halls with only a towel to cover yourself? Now that you have abandoned your classes and can no longer be called on, are you so in need of attention that you engage Order members in acts suitable for Knockturn Alley? I suggest that you clothe yourself. Immediately."

"Get out of my room!" She was shrill, incensed, and she wrapped the towel more firmly around her and crossed her arms. He couldn't have known, but black-and-white pictures of her last night flashed in her mind and shame burned her face.

"There are few things I would like more than to leave you to your escapades Miss Granger. Unfortunately for you, and perhaps more unfortunately for me, Dumbledore and Kingsley have said otherwise. Now, I believe I said dress. You have forty-five seconds, and I will return." He didn't know how exactly how closely his words struck home; anger was much more productive than her current state of half-witted shock, and so he was deliberately snide with words carefully chosen to incite her rage.

She closed her eyes and drowned Snape and Voldemort together in the toxins in her mind, then she counted to ten and pulled on suitable attire. Despite a hasty ward she had cast on her door, Snape flung it open with a crash that damaged the hinges.

He resumed the lazy lean against her wall and she could feel displeasure radiate off of him in waves that almost pushed her back. He conjured a bar that hung in the air just above her head.

"Ten pull-ups."

She grasped the bar with a venomous glare and hopped a bit as she fought to lift her chin above the bar. One, two, and her body shook. She didn't need to look at him to see the disgust in her efforts. Defiance was tangible in her mind, and her knuckles paled from the rigidity of grasp… but defiance wasn't enough, and neither was determination; Snape was not pleased.

"Not good enough. Fifty crunches. Your arms can cross your chest, or you can touch your ear with your middle finger. Begin."

These, she could do...and she did, though after number thirty-four, it required effort to finish. But she was satisfied, and she stretched her back as he ordered push-ups from her. Of ten, she managed seven before he ordered her to stop and repositioned her, and demanded she start again. She collapsed shortly after her next attempt and drew blood from the inside of her cheek as she struggled not to scream, cry, or utter some combination of the two.

He was relentless. She saw red. He told her she was physically incompetent and that she was wasting his time. She told him to go to hell. His eyes glittered and narrowed malevolently and he said he going easy on her tonight. She sneered and told him she didn't need his charity. He smirked and conjured a bar that weighed seventy pounds, and he told her to squat, and she knew then that he had won the battle she hadn't known they were fighting. With a fierce scowl, she performed thirty squats. Somewhere between number twelve and number twenty, the red broke away and she forgot her anger when she got lost in the rhythm of her lifts and the surge of her pulse; she didn't see the short nod of approval.

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_DOWN!_ he roared, and she dropped. It was instantaneous, but the grace in her fall left much to be desired. She hit her shin on the bar so hard that it purpled immediately, and tears burned her eyes. He demaned thirty more crunches, this time on her side.

Halfway through he yelled _MOVE_ and she lifted her eyes to him, puzzled, and was struck by a hex that blinded her. She shrieked and in that moment, Hermione Granger had gone and Rage was all that mattered. She grabbed for her wand, but it wasn't at her wrist, and belatedly she realized her error when she'd forgotten to set it in her holster for her impromptu fitness session. With an inarticulate scream, yell, shout, roar, she lunged in the direction where she had seen him lean against the wall, but she hit her dresser instead. The force was enough to break the glass, and the shards shredded her skin and fell into her shirt and the carpet.

She didn't care.

She flung herself sideways and tripped over the bar and she felt her ankle give. From her position on the floor, she reached out and grasped anything, everything, and she threw what felt like shoes, hangers, books, socks, and quills in different directions, trying in vain to hit what she could not see.

Just as suddenly as her rampage began, it stopped, and all color drained from her face. She drew bruised knees up to her chest and clutched them with bleeding hands, as if by holding onto something, anything, she might find balance in a world whose spin she created. Her breathing was ragged and her entire body trembled, and he could see the war that raged across her face as she fought tears of raw emotion, and lost.

"Are you quite finished, Miss Granger?" He spoke barely above a whisper, and Hermione shivered involuntarily. There was death in the silk of his voice, and she hugged her knees tighter.

"Yes, sir." Her own voice was a whisper, and there was nearly nothing behind the words. She could hear the brush of his robes as he moved his wand as he restored her vision without speaking.

"Be warned. This will not happen again. "

"Professor, I-"

"Hold your tongue, Miss Granger. You lost the right to speak when you lost your mind. It will not happen again. You are an adult. You will act like one, or I will personally see to it that any and all of your memories regarding the Order are removed, placed in a pensieve, that said pensieve is destroyed, and that you are Oblivated on the grounds that you are mentally unstable and physically unfit to serve the Order of the Phoenix. I daresay this is not something you desire."

She shook her head but couldn't meet his eyes.

"There aren't enough of us to attack each other."

He sounded…almost tired, then; perhaps not necessarily tired, but closer to human than she'd ever heard before. She tucked her chin then, and better swimmers than she would have drowned in the waves of her guilt.

"This is the Regeneration Agent. Your request for the Accelerant was denied. It is a tool for Aurors, and you are not an Auror. Prepare yourself and take this immediately. You will be dressed and ready to run at precisely 4:30 am, and you will meet me on the front steps."

These were not suggestions, these words that fell from his lips, nor did his tone invite negotiation. He withdrew a small vial of something mahogany, and he left it in her glass shard graveyard as he strode from the room. Even here, his robes billowed behind him, and in his wake, all that Hermione heard was Harry's voice in her mind as it echoed, _"Death Eaters don't fight with Stupefy, Hermione."_

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So right after I was so gung ho about a chapter a day, life kicked me in the teeth. I got sick again, and I'm pretty sure I crammed more than 80 hours into that work week... I'm not sure how mathematically, but I'm quite sure it happened. Today was a big day: I gave my notice for my second job, and I can see the light at the end of the proverbial tunnel: the return to just 40 hour work weeks is near! I am celebrating with a new chapter tonight, preparing tomorrow's, and continuing forward progress for the story. Sorry it took so long 3

Yours,  
**Threnody**


	10. Nine

**16 November 1998.

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_Death Eaters don't fight with Stupefy, Hermione. Death Eaters don't fight with Stupefy, Hermione. Death Eaters – STOP. _

She covered her ears with her hands and shut her eyes against the world. Glass got caught in her hair, and for the first time she felt the sting of the cuts in her hands and the throb of the bruise that had already risen on her shin. When she opened her eyes again, her breath died in her throat as she surveyed the damage she had wrought to her room.

She had dented her walls and torn the cover off of _1,000 Magical Herbs and Fungi_ - she felt its abuse pulse deep in her heart. The weight bar had scratched her dresser, though the crowning jewel was the remnants of her mirror and the glass-shard graveyard that had become her room.

She limped to her nightstand and with a soft _Reparo_, she mended the book first, and then her dresser. One at a time, she restored her walls, but not even magic could resurrect her mirror, and she didn't lament the loss. She Vanished the splintered wood and glass fragment and then turned away. She left the damage it had done to her skin. When she hobbled across her room to retrieve the vial of mahogany liquid instead of simply Summoning it to her, she took a small comfort in the thought of serving penance through the pain. She eyed the vial dubiously and lifted it in a sardonic salute, putting her life in the hands of Wizarding science and the talents of the potion's maker.

As soon as the cinnamon burned her tongue and set fire to her throat, she understood. The pain was shocking, really. Her vision had blurred around the edges and she desperately wished she had read more, had understood more, had questioned more. He hadn't told her that she needed to be lying down in the position of her choice, because nearly instantaneously, choice was taken from her. He had said extremely painful, and he'd said that putting a week's worth of healing into a weekend would put wizards into a coma. He hadn't told her that delaying her body's healing just one day would make her _wish_ for a coma.

She'd been sitting on her bed when the cinnamon touched her tongue. The muscles in her legs had failed and she'd lost her brace against the floor. She collapsed, and the strength in her arms wasn't enough to lift her back to the bed. Her muscles stretched and tore and healed, stronger than before, and through it all she screamed color instead of sound.

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**19 November 1998.**

She didn't sleep. Through the night, she watched the passage of time, marked by unobtrusive red numbers that hovered above her wand. She counted minutes like she counted thunder and flashes of lightning, and she tried to keep the numbers separate in her head because it was something to think about that did not involve pain. As the numbers neared 4:00, she felt the tremors in her muscles slow in frequency and dull in pain. By 4:18, she felt bold enough to attempt movement, and she lifted herself to a sitting position on the floor. 4:28 found her on the front porch steps, stretching similarly to how Harry had shown her the day (_only one day?) _before, and marveling at the way her body moved. She felt… more limber, stronger even – though she attribute this to the placebo effect, because truly, one day's efforts, even through magic, surely couldn't have such an immediate effect. It didn't matter though, because at precisely 4:30, Severus Snape opened the front door and shut it, much more gently than not.

"Professor, I want to apologize. I acted rashly, immaturely, and there is no excuse for my actions. I'm sorry and itwon'thappenagain."

Her words ran together like the puddles on the ground and he sneered, and she dropped her gaze, and she scraped a fingernail against the cuticle of her thumb.

"I believe we discussed this last night, though it is good to know your verdict hasn't changed. Roll your pant leg to the knee – no, the other one."

She was puzzled, but she drew the material up to reveal the bruise on her shin. It was a magnificent showcase of deep purple and magenta, and the colors could have been beautiful were they painted on a canvas other than her skin. He tapped the bruise with more force than was strictly necessary, and she flinched and yelped as it healed, and left a rush of anger in its wake.

"Atone for your sins in another way. This will only serve to hinder your progress, and waste my time. Come."

She ground her teeth but she followed him quietly, preferring more to preserve her breath than to defend her dignity. In the cadence of footfalls and measured breaths, she let her mind go, and she wondered how he had known, not only that she had left the bruise, but why she chose to leave it. There had been no touch of Legilimency. The revelation that he might have known, because he might have understood, might have been there once softened her.

"_DOWN!_" Broke her thoughts and she dropped. It wasn't fast enough, and a Stinging Jinx caught her in the shoulder. As she rolled slowly to her feet, a second caught her in the thigh, and she shrieked and dove to her left, casting a shield as she hit the ground. His third hit the shield, and he lowered his wand. Her feelings of solidarity were already gone, lost in the same way dreams fade away in between the moments of sleep and waking.

"Hiding, Miss Granger? Do tell me where the fun is in that?" He cast a Hiccupping Hex and she cast _Protego_, and she glared because she saw mirth in the gleam of his eyes.

"I apologized for my – _PROTEGO!_ – actions last night, and promised not to – _PROTEGO!_ – attack you again! You yourself said that there weren't enough of us to fight each other! _PROTEGO!_"

She cast shields against the hexes and jinxes that he threw at her even as she spoke, and she was winded but wary with her left hand on her hip. Simply standing, he held an easy grace, and it irritated her that he could stand straight, with his shoulders squared, and seem indolent in the same moment. Only then did she notice that he was dressed similarly to her, in a black shirt that clung to his arms and black pants that and were resistant to the rain that had dusted her own.

"They call you the brightest witch of your age, girl. Tell me, what good are a few miles of running? You could be reading books, you could be practicing wandwork, you could be sleeping, for Merlin's sake. Why are you outside, running before the sun is up, when you will be fighting for your life tomorrow? Do _not_ answer 'because you said to'."

"I…," her eyes widened a fraction and she closed her mouth, reconsidering her answer. He waited.

"Additional endurance-"

"Will not be gained by two days' efforts."

"Following orders-"

"Is something that you have demonstrated proficiency in with your academic scores, though it seems that skill is conditional to textbooks and occasionally, the classroom. _Expelliarmus_!" and she lost possession of her wand. In the next breath he cast _Crucio_ above her head, _Rictusempra_ to her left, and _Furnunculus_ where she had been standing half a second earlier.

Hermione's heart beat so hard in her chest that she felt the echo in her skin, and she caught her breath as she ducked and then dove forward in an awkward roll. She yelped in pain when her neck cracked and her shoulder drove a rock into the dirt, and she hissed.

"Bloody hell!"

Lazily, he cast _Stupefy_ into the ground next to her and mud spattered her face as she lurched to her feet, only to drop again when _Furnunculus_ shot past her ear. Between the adrenaline and exertion, sheer confusion and something dangerously close to wrath, her vision swam and she couldn't breathe, and she couldn't think, she could only –

"REACTION." And like magic, he lowered his wand and extended hers.

"The word I was looking for was actually "reflexes", but "reaction" will suffice. Five points to Gryffindor."

She could hear the sneer in the drawl of his words, but all she wanted was to breathe. And-

"Professor, why-"

"You will need to multitask, Miss Granger. My presence is required at Hogwarts." He slipped his wand back under his sleeve and took off at a brisk run. She cursed him under her breath and shoved her own wand into a knot in rain-tamed hair, forgetting to measure her breath as she struggled to catch him. He was correct about a few miles not improving her endurance over the span of a day though, and she would fail, trailing behind him, struggling to not break her pace as the stitch grew in her side. She left her question in the rain.

* * *

I have such wonderful readers. Thank you for the reviews LK-HoGwArTs-hEaDgIrL and heartmom88! To my anonymous reviewer, THANK YOU! I am terrified of losing Severus' character, and it means so much that you find him as canon as I hope him to be. Please let me know if I falter, but I will do my best by him.

Yours,**  
Threnody**


	11. Ten

Disclaimer: Not mine. :)

**16 November 1998.**

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He returned before she did, and when she climbed the stairs to enter the house, he had long since gone. It took her a long time to return to this world after being lost in the even intervals of foot falls and breaths. Her hatred of running had only dulled slightly; it was a dull roar of sullen dislike, but she might have enjoyed the time it gave her to think. By the time she crossed the threshold of Grimmauld Place, she had lists long enough to drag on the floor of her mind - lists of topics, of titles, of theories to end the war. It was by sheer force of will that she made it to her room to change her clothes before she lost herself in literature and the passage of time was tracked by the beats of her heart. She was settled in an armchair, soothed by cups of tea that grew cold as she forgot the existence of the rest of the world. The more that she read, the calmer she felt, until Harry's voice brought her back to Earth when he stumbled across her name.

"I thought you were supposed to be kept safe." She lifted her eyes to meet his and nearly drowned in the anxiety that pooled there. He smelled of cigarettes and she closed her book, reaching out for him and taking a hand that still trembled. He drew her from the chair and half-pulled, half-tripped to the front steps where he lit another cigarette and tried to stop the shaking.

"It _was_ safe. Kingsley knew we were too late. She turned eleven three weeks ago, Hermione. She never even got to see Hogwarts. Bellatrix took her while she was being fitted for robes, and her mother had gone to the back to pay."

Hermione closed her eyes and flinched through her body, all the way to her soul, and she kept Harry's hand in both of her own. He took a long drag and for a moment, she was glad that a lost little girl inspired such fervor because it meant the war hadn't ruined him yet, and then she was ashamed because she knew in her heart the girl was already dead and ashamed that she wondered how much longer one man could continue to care. He exhaled silver tendrils that wrapped around the night and he pulled her close to his chest. In another time, the gesture could have been romantic; perhaps, had they an audience, it would have looked that way regardless.

He didn't need her to speak; she didn't have anything to say. It was enough that she was there and he could feel the subtle heat of her body that told him she was real. She was quiet because she knew he didn't need words, and long minutes passed while she counted the number of times that his chest fell. The clothing between them wasn't enough to hide the sharpness of his body and she let her head rest against the hollow under his shoulder until he took a deep breath, and the fingers holding her ribs slipped to her hip, and she breathed her own relief because she knew he'd keep caring that night, and it was the best that she could have hoped for.

She'd spent the last seven years of her life with him, but she had never seen Harry like this. He'd thrown his cigarette and grabbed her wrist and he dragged her after him roughly until she understood that they were going for a run, even though she didn't have shoes on her feet. When he roared _DOWN_, she was ready, and she dropped and fired spells that turned orange by the light of the fading sun, and then she scrambled gracelessly to her feet because she needed to _MOVE_ because he'd already thrown another hex at the spot where she'd been. It was exhilarating; it was wild, but she found a rhythm, and for those few moments, Harry was free.

Later that night, she was cautious, but she understood the RA this time, and she chose the middle of her bed before she opened her throat to the quick flood of cinnamon. The pain rendered her not-quite blind, but she couldn't see color, and the shades of grey blurred together. In her head, she saw the words that she'd read earlier that day, and she clung to them desperately as a way to pass the night.

**

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**

17 November 1998.

She had slept some, but she had not slept well and her eyes felt like sandpaper. With a muffled oath, she groped for the vial of Pepper Up from the supply inside the nightstand beside her bed. She uncorked it with her teeth and tipped it back into her mouth. Definition returned to her world in the form of lines and boundaries and individuality. Adrenaline interrupted the fluidity of her movements and sharpened her senses. The air felt heavier today and the world seemed quieter. All she wanted was tea for breakfast, but Harry had disagreed and insisted she eat sausage. She compromised by eating toast with jam like she had so many days before, though on this day it tasted too sweet.

She admired the morning, taking careful note of the birds in the sky and the precise shades of bright scarlet and pale yellow on the trees as the leaves began to change, and she marveled that anything could be so lovely when it died. Her thoughts were halted by the dull thump of Moody's leg as he entered the kitchen with Tonks, Seamus Finnigan, Charlie Weasley, Alicia Spinnet, and Kenneth Towler. Tonks and Charlie were jovial and Seamus and Alicia argued the merits of Irish Quidditch. Kenneth was new to the Order though, and Hermione thought there might have been truth to the idea of smelling fear. She recognized him vaguely as a former Gryffindor, though she was currently more preoccupied with keeping her toast down than trying to soothe his nerves when she couldn't even settle her own.

She took another cup of tea and wished for Kingsley's oversized coffee mug as she watched Moody's lips move and she listened to his voice.

"This is a raid on a Death Eater safe house. On paper, it's owned by the Crabbe family. Activity has been minimal, but we have it on our own pet Death Eater's authority that it is in use, and that a good chunk of medicinal potions are being stored there. We are expecting to interrupt a new shipment to that house, and should find Crabbe Sr., Goyle Sr., Draco Malfoy, Rodolphus Lestrange, and Snape. With Lestrange, we run the additional risk of encountering Bellatrix."

Moody paused to glower at each of his team members, and his gaze lingered on Hermione. Belatedly, she felt his stare, and her lips stopped moving as she halted her mental assessment of the Death Eaters he had listed.

"It is unlikely they will be masked. If they are, remember Snape fights with _Sectumsempra_. I am under strict orders by Dumbledore to not fatally injure him, and I am also under strict orders to pass along those same strict orders to each of you."

His lip curled, somewhere between disgust and distain, and Hermione wondered if it caused him physical pain to issue that reminder; if she judged by the expression on his face, the level of pain must have been significant.

"Any questions? No? We have a newcomer. Towler, keep your head on straight, this isn't training anymore and Death Eaters don't follow anyone's rules. CONSTANT VIGILANCE. We leave together, via portkey, in 3, 2, 1, -" She'd only just set down her toast when the _Pop! _took them away._  
_

When the pull behind her navel eased, Hermione opened her eyes and saw dead trees and an unnatural shimmer that screamed of magic and secrets and something of value. She snorted slightly and resisted the temptation to roll her eyes because subtly rarely existed in the wizarding world. Even the most untrained of eyes could have noted that something was being protected because dilapidated shacks rotting in the middle of the woods weren't worth the effort it took to ward them.

They moved forward as a group, fanning out and taking care not to break dead tree limbs or crunch fallen leaves. Their caution didn't matter though because the shack was alive with Dark magic and with a shout, Tonks touched a leaf that tripped a jinx that went straight to her heart.

Hermione heard a shout and saw movement and she felt the magic of curses and hexes singe the air. She heard _DOWN_ in her head and she dropped to the ground and _Stupefy_ shot from her wand. She was unschooled enough to be elated when a Death Eater fell to the ground, and then she panicked because she counted nine death eaters when they had hoped for five and anticipated six. _MOVE _hurt her ears and then _Sectumsempra_ severed the branch where her shoulder used to be, and later she would think that she was crazy, but she thought she saw something reminiscent of approval in Severus Snape's eyes.

Moody was wrong; they were masked, and Hermione dove again to avoid the first _Crucio._ She landed artlessly but untouched, though her shoulder throbbed from the awkward roll. A moment later she forgot her shoulder when the second Cruciatus landed just above her naval. She dropped, and it might have been mercy that she didn't see Kenneth Towler forget his training and try to cast _Imperio_. The Death Eater dueling Seamus though, and instead, the curse hit Seamus and he froze in the middle of his battle. With a shout, Towler fumbled with his wand and dropped his eyes just in time to miss the bold flash of green light that took his life away. The Death Eater didn't live long enough to celebrate; Charlie Weasley took revenge when he took someone's life, but wasn't soon enough to still the look of delight frozen in the Death Eater's eyes when his mask dropped away to reveal it was Alecto Carrow who died.

Hermione's screams overshadowed Tonks' when fire erupted from her skin, but Tonks cast a hex that left Bella's muscles too soft to hold a wand. Hermione convulsed, curled with her nose touching her knees as she fought to differentiate the sky from the grass. The sides had been compromised in a furious rush of death and order and right then, her vision was blurred and she couldn't tell the difference between furious faces and light from the wands. She caught sight of Snape as he aimed for Seamus, who hadn't been the same after thirty-nine seconds of _Imperio_. She tried to cast a trip jinx, but she should have known better and that he was too fluid on his feet. She understood the significance when red _Stupefy_ slipped between her legs and she leapt aside when _Sectumsempra_ just missed her hip.

At that moment, there were two howls. One came from Moody and it was a turbulent combination of wrath and agony when Bellatrix caught him with _Crucio_ as a punishment for dismantling the protective wards on the shack.

The second howl came from Alicia Spinnet. She didn't move fast enough to evade the _Sectumsempra_ that Severus threw at Hermione and it flayed her abdomen from the bottom of the left side of her ribs to the hollow of skin that dipped between her hip bones.

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The email for the account is tied to my phone, and I have absolutely no doubt in my mind that your reviews, popping up strategically through the day, saved several people yesterday, customers and coworkers alike. It was a rough. 24 days left!

This is completely irrelevant to the story, but my dog's dad and family KICKED BUTT at their show this weekend, and I am so freaking proud. Yay, Rebel!

Yours,  
**Threnody**


	12. Eleven

17 November 1998.

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_The second howl came from Alicia Spinnet. She didn't move fast enough to evade the __Sectumsempra__ that Severus threw at Hermione and it flayed her abdomen from the bottom of the left side of her ribs to the hollow of skin that dipped between her hip bones._

It was Alicia's blood that righted Hermione's world when the spray hit her face, her nose, her lips. The trees stopped moving and she leapt over Towler's body and sidestepped shallow fissures in a ground disfigured by wayward spells. She wasn't sure where the agility came from because she'd never moved like that before, but time to analyze it was not a luxury she was allowed to have. Instead, she simply reacted; she redefined the front line when she leapt forward in front of six people and a dead man, and she screamed _PROTEGO! _with so much passion that her voice carried over the pain and rage that blinded both sides of the war. Two seconds, five, six, the effort shook her bones and broke blood vessels in her eyes, but she held it eight, nine, ten. She held it long enough for Moody to re-issue orders, and somewhere, way far away, Hermione heard that Seamus was to Disapparate with Alicia in his arms and Towler's dead arm wrapped around his leg, because he deserved dignity in death, and Alicia wouldn't live much longer.

Hermione swayed dangerously on her feet, and her shield flickered alarmingly. In the fraction of a second it took for her shield to fail completely, Tonks, Moody, and Charlie overtook her and as one, cast _Confringo_. The blast brought her to her knees and when she wiped her nose, her hand came away red, and only some of the blood was Alicia's. She lurched to her feet and stared in disbelief when Rookwood, Rodolphus, Snape, Lucius, Crabbe, and Goyle Sr. flew backwards, but their flight was nothing compared to the explosion of the safe house. The sky was lit in shades of deep purple, magenta, and black. She shrieked when the green of the Killing Curse lanced toward them, and they scattered, and Moody was hoarse when he called for their return home. She didn't object when Charlie took her arm and Apparated her with him because her body still trembled with the effort it had taken to hold her shield and she collapsed back on Grimmauld soil.

* * *

When she woke, the white of hospital walls and bright light should have hurt her eyes. In a clinical sense she noted discomfort as a throbbing pain behind her left eye, but it didn't matter because she was straining against the bed and disoriented. Alicia was on her left, still and quiet with a face so pale it rivaled the bandages around her middle. Hermione's heart beat fiercely against her chest and she found it hard to breathe until she caught sight of the phoenix that was painted above the hospital doors. Just as Madam Pomfrey had intended it, the painted phoenix grounded her like it grounded all of the soldiers that woke somewhere strange in the midst of war, and she calmed. It was strange to feel serene in the hospital room, but having spent hours healing , she did.

She took a moment to take inventory of her body and found herself to be lacking superficial injuries, having three chipped nails, but in one piece. She swung her legs over the bed to examine Alicia, but the motion triggered alarms that Poppy had set and within seconds, the mediwitch hurried into the room.

"Lie back down and don't move, love. I need to look you over more fully, now that you're awake."

"Will Alicia be okay?" Hermione asked, even as she complied. Poppy was grim and hovered over Hermione, waving her wand and casting diagnostic spells over the younger girl. She still hesitated before answering.

"Severus' _Sectumsempra_. He intended to miss you, and couldn't have anticipated Miss Spinnet stumbling in the way. By itself, it _can _be healed, but it appears she was already bleeding internally. She was brought here quickly, but I couldn't heal her. I induced a magical coma, and cast a stasis over the injuries. It is temporary, not a solution. Severus is brewing something to try and repair the damage."

"Merlin… is he okay? And Tonks..Charlie… Oh, God, Towler!" Her stomach heaved and she leaned over the side of her bed and lost the contents of her stomach to the hardwood floor. The contraction of her muscles sent stars behind her eyes and she moaned and curled into herself.

"Physically, Severus was unscathed. Tonks had burns, Charlie broke his left hand and dislocated his shoulder, Seamus was only superficially injured, and Moody is recovering from Cruciatus. You, dear, had cuts and bruises healed. You still need to receive the potion that helps with the tremors, but the Cruciatus aftershocks will be particularly severe, because that shield you cast nearly exhausted your magic. Moody said he hadn't seen anything like that and wants to know how you did it." Poppy sighed and ended her spells, noting on Hermione's chart that the drop in magic had stabilized, and though painfully slowly, was beginning to rise again.

"For now, you need to rest. And, it is imperative that you do not use magic until your levels are safe again. To do so would run the risk of anything between a coma and losing your magic permanently." She paused. "Oh, Hermione – Mr. Weasley's – that is, Ron's- group returned shortly before your own. You should know that he came back unhurt, and Bill Weasley and Sturgis Podmore are both alive and healing.

For just a little too long her face remained blank, before she schooled her expression into that of pleasure. She bared her teeth in what she intended as a smile, but it curved her lips the wrong way and didn't reach her eyes.

"Thank you. I… I need to go. I need… to go." She fled, haltingly and ungracefully, from the makeshift hospital room. Hermione Granger desperately needed air in a way she hadn't in… three days. Her lungs ached and her mouth was dry and her pulse pounded in her temples. She threw open the front door and Harry spun with his wand drawn on her. It was a reaction, instinct, a manifestation of perfect wartime training and she shook her head and her breath caught in her throat. As quickly as he drew his wand he shoved it in his waistband and drew her into his arms. Murmured apologies and regret fell like rain from his lips and he clung to her like he was afraid she'd leave – maybe she would have if he had let go.

Ron was sprawled on the floor with his back braced against the house and his hand wrapped around the bottle between his legs. He felt guilty because he'd walked away from his battle uninjured. Bill had nearly lost his life and Sturgis had endured the Cruciatus, and he drank away the guilt because that was the only way he could fall asleep at night. The scent of whiskey assaulted Hermione's nose and it was heavy but inviting and she knelt, unpeeled his fingers, and drank straight from the bottle. Ron tried to look at her but his eyes wouldn't focus and his mind had drowned in the sheer quantity of alcohol he had consumed. He tried to speak, but she couldn't tell when one word ended and the next began and she shrugged and drank again.

She hadn't done this before. It wasn't like her, but she decided it was okay. Already the sharp angles of her emotions had been smoothed, softened, and the roar of thought in her head had dulled. She tipped the bottle to her lips a third time, and between lack of food and medicinal potions, it was enough warm her fingers and toes and let her giggle (really giggle) with a grin that crinkled the skin around her eyes when Ron passed wind and was too inebriated to notice. Harry rolled his eyes and hauled his friend to his feet. When the task of walking proved too arduous for Ron to achieve, Harry simply levitated him through the door and into his room.

Thoroughly amused, Hermione bade them both goodnight and capped the bottle of whiskey. She started to lift her wand to send the bottle back to the cabinet that held Ron's collection, but even the thought of magic created an angry pulse between her eyes.

For a long time, she simply sat outside and admired the beauty of the night. She fancied that the stars were souls who had defied gravity, suspended between time and space. She admired their beauty, and wondered how long they had studded the sky; if, in the nature of astronomy, that time and age were directly proportional to distance. She wondered if Kenneth Towler had become a star, and she wondered if falling stars were souls that chose to escape. She wondered if Death Eaters had souls, if they could become stars. She wondered if murderers could be stars, and found it hard to rationalize something so dark could ever be something as beautiful as the glowing balls of gas that lit the sky, and it made her sad when she wondered where her own soul would go and what she would look like; and then she snorted, because wondering that made the assumption that she'd still have a soul by the time she died.

Her mood had deteriorated as much as her sobriety had returned; with it, angry melancholy. She stood abruptly and flung open the door. The deep brown of her eyes seethed, not unlike the ocean, and she stalked through the halls of Grimmauld Place.


	13. Twelve

**18 November 1998.**

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_Her mood had deteriorated as much as her sobriety had returned; with it, angry melancholy. She stood abruptly and flung open the door. The deep brown of her eyes seethed, not unlike the ocean, and she stalked through the halls of Grimmauld Place._

Her step was fluid, more like a dancer than the warrior she had been only hours before. The grace she exuded would have been so beneficial on the battlefield – but she wasn't thinking about war or blood or beauty or grace. She was thinking about panting and heated skin in her desperation to stop the slide of her world and restore her center of gravity.

She found it in a man named Summers when she crossed into the kitchen. She spent five minutes in front of the refrigerator staring blankly at curdled milk, raw eggs, Stilton cheese and yesterday's curry before she blinked the haze from her eyes and chose a block of cheddar. She cubed the cheese with a dull knife she found in a drawer and ignored the man in the kitchen. Summers had light hair and skin bronzed by someone else's sun, and she wished he was the season. She sat across the table from him, and watched through narrowed eyes. She used her teeth against a small square of cheese and closed her lips in a way that could have been innocent had her eyes not been boring into his. She was unpracticed but he found it erotic. When she rose, he did too, and he followed her as she stepped into the hall.

It was Wednesday and she was feeling reckless. Her own bedroom was a permanent fixture within Grimmauld Place, but bodies rotated in and out of the house, and a series of rooms were made available to those needing temporary lodging. She chose a vacant room at random and once inside, instead of closing it, she left the door ajar. Her curiosity flared and she ran her fingers along the wall and brushed the lamp on the nightstand by the bed. She heard the hinges of the door in their soft protest and she whirled with fierce eyes and a drawn wand.

Summers met her eyes in challenge, but he raised his hands in the universal gesture of surrender. His body smoldered when he cautiously shut the door, and slowly, slowly, he took her hands and backed her against the wall. Her body melded with his like it was meant to be. She was soft and pale, and he didn't notice that her waist was wider than it could have been or that her stomach wasn't hard. In this moment she wasn't shy and he was busy inhaling her careless abandon because it was sexy and he was lost in her bravado.

She pushed on one shoulder and too easily she reversed their position so that his shoulder blades were the ones that ground into the ragged wallpaper. She felt his fingers tighten around her arms but she growled. He relented and she knew she had won. She pulled him from the wall and pulled his lips to hers, walking in to him even as she kissed him with an intensity that should have scared him.

He let her backed him from the wall to someone else's bed, and he whimpered softly when her lips touched his neck. He moaned when her teeth closed on his shoulder, and he groaned when her nails cut into his scalp.

"Stay," she growled again when she took steps back and pulled her shirt over her head. She didn't blink when she undid the button that held up her pants.

"Off," she commanded when she cocked her chin and set her hands upon her hips. She was expectant, impatient, and he hurried to comply. Not soon enough (_too soon!_) he was naked before her, and _he_ wasn't what she wanted, but _it_ was what she needed, and in arousal (_frustration_) she growled at him again and pinned him beneath her in the bed. She knew what to expect this time and she took him in her hand. He was hard and the skin felt like velvet against her fingers. The hurricane in her head abated just a bit, and she put him where she wanted him and moved slowly. Skin against skin, friction at its best. There wasn't much of a rhythm and it took too long, but finally she arched and screamed in such a way that the window rattled, but she came.

She sucked in her first breath, but she spent her second with one word.

"Go," and he did. He scrambled to put on his underpants, and though he left his shirt and his shoes, he all but ran from the room.

She thought his intimidation was odd, because she'd smiled when she spoke. It would have taken her a mirror to understand, to see that her eyes were dull in a dead sort of way, that even in the dark, her skin held an unhealthy sheen of pale.

She gave him ten minutes before she slipped from the sheets, waiting for her heartbeat to slow and her breath to quiet to normal. Dressing was more difficult than she had anticipated. She was shaky, and in retrospect, sex had not been a good decision - she was supposed to be recovering, physically and magically, because she sure as hell wouldn't recover emotionally any time soon. She rolled her shoulders methodically and considered it a success, though. She hadn't thought about Voldemort or Alicia or Ron's drinking or Kenneth fucking Towler, who had the audacity to die in front of her for… approximately thirty-nine minutes and seventeen seconds. A blank mind was an understated bliss, something new for her to cherish.

She changed the sheets the Muggle way and lit a candle to diffuse the scent of sex from the room. Curling her lip, she picked up his shirt and shoes and shut the door as she left. They would go to the community stash of emergency clothes, and they would serve someone else well.

* * *

Summers is mentioned as being an already-graduated Hufflepuff. I took the liberty of making him interact with the Order. I'm not sure what he does, precisely – he might push papers, he might be a consultant, he might… remove Nargle infestations, I don't know. He's mentioned somewhere in the books (verified by the HP Lexicon), and I decided to reinforce his existence because Hermione needed an outlet.

Thank you so much for such faithful reviews. A few concerns were mentioned that I'd like to address, because I learned a long time ago that even if only one person voices a question, more than that one person have the same question.

-Sentence structure, run on sentences, an overabundance of commas and ands: I am fully capable of writing 'correctly', however the last thing that I wrote was my thesis. After such a rigid, structured, best-worst-experience-of-my-life, I'm rebelling just because I can. With the extent of the rebellion brought to my attention, I will be going back and revising most of the incorrectness. What I don't fix, I'm leaving intentionally because it pertains to the mood or the flow of a scene that I'm trying to bring past my mind, and into yours.

-Gryffindors/Slytherins, Good/Evil: I need to present a very obvious black and white so that the transition to grey is as significant to the reader as it is to Hermione. It is a lesson that I feel is imperative to the evolution of her relationship with Snape from professor to, ultimately, her other half.

-There's more, but I have to go to work in not enough hours, and will address more in the next chapter :D

Please and thank you for your reviews - ESPECIALLY the ones that tell me where I'm off, when things don't make sense, or if I get lost in the words and accidentally blend people together. My e-mail should be visible on my author profile, but I am xxthrenody at g mail. I love conversation and questions. SocksForDobby, you are PHENOMENAL. Thank you again for taking so much time on your reviews. Please don't stop :)

**-Now I'm worried my responses to your reviews aren't getting out :X I've sent somewhere to a few sentences, to a few paragraphs, to everyone. Are they being received?-**

Yours,  
**Threnody**


	14. Thirteen

**19 November 1998.**

* * *

Dawn had long since broken, but Severus never knew. His private laboratory was below the ground in the most interior of the castle. Like all Masters, he preferred to brew in a room that was bare of even magical windows as this was the only way to avoid contamination by something so easily managed as excess light. For Severus, time passed in small increments and counter-clockwise stirs; the twenty-four hours of someone else's day didn't matter here.

His students spun tales of vampires and Darkness. Severus knew he was referred to as the Greasy Bat of the Dungeons. Even in the privacy of his own lab, he was too cultured to be so uncouth as to roll his eyes, though a lesser man might have snorted. It didn't matter. He had long since abandoned the hope that even one student could understand the subtle blend of science and art that was potion-making. As such, he had things he considered more important with which to waste his voice upon than explaining the way that air currents, temperature, and light, be it artificial or natural, could decimate a delicate potion… important things such as breathing, which he did even as Alicia Spinnet did not.

In the dim light his eyes snapped, a flash of obsidian suffocated by the red haze of infrared. Long fingers hesitated as he kept the count in his head. Two hundred eleven. Two hundred twelve. Two hundred thirteen, and he splayed the fingers of his second hand to let two ounces of powdered unicorn horn fall into the cauldron. He watched as the liquid seethed and with a pewter rod, he stirred four times counter clockwise and murmured a stasis charm to hold his work. Carefully, he donned dragonhide gloves and lifted the cauldron. He decanted the healing potion by hand because it was fragile; it was something of his own creation, something that he had woven ingredients together by _feel_ and little more than instinct. _Sectumsempra_ wasn't necessarily supposed to be fatal. It certainly could be, but it was also very treatable pending the skill of the Mediwitch, the quality of the healing potions available to her, and a certain lack of pre-existing internal bleeding whose cause had yet to be determined. Pomfrey was more than adequate and traditional healing potions hadn't worked for the girl, but he'd be damned before he _let_ her die.

_Stupid Gryffindor_. His eyes snapped again and he allowed the surge of anger to distract him because anger was safer than guilt. He had cast Sectumsempra because he'd created Sectumsempra, and it had fused with him, become a part of him in the same way the scars on his body had become a part of him. When he cast, he had done so after watching Hermione Granger fall, roll, rise, and aim her wand both in practice and there, while under fire. He'd cast because he knew where she was then, and where she would be fractions of a second later. He'd cast accurately. No one else had been in her vicinity until Lucius had cast a burning hex, and Alicia Spinnet had invaded the space Severus had designated for his curse. _Fucking Gryffindors_.

And yet… she had been his student, and she was clearly a member of the Order of the Phoenix. _T__here aren't enough of us to attack each other. _Something too close to guilt flung itself at him when his words came back to him, banging the corners of his mind. He set his jaw against it all.

She wouldn't live.

He knew this as surely as he knew he was already damned. It didn't mean he wouldn't try. He hadn't been hopeful, and so he hadn't been disappointed when the potion had failed.

During the brief moments that Poppy had lifted the magical stasis, Alicia deteriorated rapidly, and in the rush to re-stabilize her, his left arm burned.

Severus swore fiercely enough to earn a look of reproach from the Mediwitch. The call was too early. His heart rate might have increased, but he was silent as he left the hospital room to enter his own and he retrieved his Death Eater robes. The bone of his mask was cold in his hand and he slipped it into an inner pocket. He paused briefly, closed his eyes and reopened them to stare at the Dark Mark on the inside of his forearm. When it burned, he corrected his mind. It wasn't pain. It was adrenaline, the surge in his veins kept him alive. He rolled his shoulders and then fled from his room to the gates that guarded the castle. Outside the wards, he Apparated away.

* * *

The wards of Malfoy Manor yielded as easily as the Manor gates for him, and something akin to pleasure stroked the fibers of his being when he passed through.

Narcissa stood in the entryway. She was lovely in blue, and the shade of ice in her gown echoed the ice in her eyes. He took the hand that she offered to him and brushed his lips over the back. She smiled then, but it was grim, and the tension she carried in her shoulders made his own want to ache.

"Good afternoon, Severus. I trust you are well?" She took his arm and led him from the drawing room. The casual ease with which she spoke directly contradicted the urgency of her step. That she had received him instead of an elf spoke volumes, and a tingle of unease wove its way between his bones.

"Quite well, Narcissa. To what do I owe the pleasure of your company?"

"I am concerned that Draco's enthusiasm for his education is waning and would like to further discuss the subject with you when you've the time. I simply wanted to be sure that I caught you today before you left, and what better way to do so than to greet you as you arrived?" Even speaking softly, Narcissa's voice had a musical quality that soothed the ear, and not for the first time, Severus appreciated that a beautiful woman was rarely perceived as intelligent. Narcissa had devoted her entire life to nurturing the image of the perfect Pureblood lady; she was gentle and generous; she was sophisticated; she was the embodiment of docility, and she was ravishing. Her home was immaculate and her reputation was flawless. She masked her mind behind sweet smiles and hid wit behind etiquette.

Yes, he decided, Narcissa Malfoy was downright terrifying, and he was glad that more women were not like her.

"It would seem that young Mr. Malfoy's attention is a finite resource, and that an increase in attention to a certain Miss Greengrass is directly proportionate to the decline in his attention to his schooling. It is a topic that I had planned discussing with you and Lucius later this evening, actually. Unfortunately, I must leave you here. Until then, Narcissa."

He inclined his head to her and swept through ballroom doors and dropped to his knee before Lord Voldemort.

"Rise." And so he did, though he kept his eyes low and his head bowed. He clasped his hands behind his back and waited.

"I am displeased, Severus. Do you know why?"

"I dare not presume to know the wonders of your mind, my Lord."

A lazy exhale and absence of pain served as approval for this answer.

"I am displeased that nine of my most senior Death Eaters proved themselves to be incompetent when confronted with seven members of the Order of the Phoenix. _Crucio!_"

Two decades had taught Severus to give, to let his knees buckle and to roll into the cold marble floor. Two decades had taught Severus to unclench his muscles methodically, beginning with his jaw and ending with the last joints in his toes. Two decades had taught Severus that nothing he did would minimize the pain, but four still hadn't taught him not to try.

When the curse was lifted, his body continued to tremble. In the time that it took him to recover, Voldemort had levitated him and red eyes burned into Severus' as he clawed through his mind and scrutinized his memory. For the second time, Severus stood beside Poppy and administered his custom healing draught to Alicia, and for the second time, he was unsurprised that his efforts had failed. He found himself in the potions storeroom, long fingers touching glass jars as he put forth genuine effort to healing the Gryffindor girl. His heart beat angry staccato against his chest when smoke and haze and spellfire lit the sky and he saw Hermione Granger throw up a shield powerful enough to block a series of curses and bought the Order enough time to destroy the storage house. Finally, he saw walls that built a Malfoy ballroom and Voldemort standing before him.

"Your Lord is merciful, Severus. The construction of Sectumsempra is genius. I see that even you have failed to staunch the damage it created. With such authentic effort, you earn the Order's trust. Continue trying to beat yourself, Severus.

"Potter's mudblood – was this an accurate display of her abilities?"

"You are gracious, my Lord.

"Even if not for blood inferiority, the girl only possesses the level of skill that can be taught. Her marks are acceptable, though the faculty blatantly favors her, but she lacks any ability to progress beyond what a textbook can teach her. This reaction was emotionally driven, something akin to accidental magic. I do not believe she would be capable of producing the same result twice simply because it requires an individualized touch, a certain focus... and originality, if you will. She lacks the capacity to work outside a book."

"This is predictable, of course, but it is good to hear my suspicions are confirmed. You are dismissed."

Severus knelt and brought Voldemort's robes to his lips, and then he rose again and backed away, exiting the room without turning his back. He stumbled twice during his exit and fumbled with the latch on the door, but the gratefulness of being permitted to leave upon his own two feet wasn't enough to halt the suspicion in his mind.

* * *

SocksForDobby is my hero, and should definitely be YOUR hero too. After five days (and many more tantrums) of error message when I tried to update, SocksForDobby taught me how to beat the this website. Hooray!

To my lovely Anonymous reviewer - I feel as though I should apologize to you. This story will be SS/HG. A friend presented the challenge to me by essentially telling me that the relationship was unnatural and that I couldn't do it. By nature of my personality, I had to try, and thus Fireshy Firefly was born. My goal with this story is to take a canon Snape and a canon Hermione, and make the uncanon happen. I may not achieve this, but I am going to try. I hope you'll stick around to see it play out :)

There are SO MANY levels that I'm weaving into this story - most are probably recognizable only to me until you ask a question or remark upon something and I'm compelled to take you on a trip inside my brain :D I'm knowingly biting off more than I can chew, but I'm going to take the time to do my best. Fireshy will be novel-length - at least a couple, if not several, hundred thousand words. It wont be finished this year.

Thank you to SocksForDobby, slytherinchick123, heartmom88, LK-HoGwArTs-hEaDgIrL, and of course, my Anonymous reviewer. Your comments mean the world to me.

Yours,  
**Threnody**


	15. Fourteen

**Disclaimer: **not mine.

**

* * *

19 November 1998**

* * *

By virtue of will, Narcissa continued to the library when Severus bid her farewell to take his appointment with the Dark Lord. By virtue of a lifetime's training, she did so without losing the facade of composure. As she strode through the aisles, the silk of her gown brushed against the spines of the books. Suggestion of a frown touched the skin on her forehead and she summoned an elf. She brushed away the dust that wasn't there and pulled a book from the shelf above her head without attention to the title.

"See that the library is cleaned."

It bowed before her and spoke words she didn't hear. She nodded absently and turned away, sweeping back through the doors perhaps just a bit too quickly.

She'd made it habit to read in one of the smaller drawing rooms while she waited for meetings to end. If asked, she would have said she loved the natural light from the windows and found conversation distasteful when voices echoed as a result of too much space. Truly, she preferred it more for reasons that she wouldn't have admitted to. The increase in violence wasn't restricted to Mudbloods and their supporters; it has escalated for the Death Eaters, too. By waiting here, she had subtly designated this to be the room that their associates retired to when their appointments concluded, and she had redecorated accordingly. The marble floors were easy enough to clean, but she found dark wood trim was more forgiving of bile and that black leather furniture didn't show a history of blood. She had donated several rooms to The Cause and she'd sacrificed this one too, but she'd be damned before the entirety of her home was savaged.

She sat delicately on the only chair that hadn't been tainted; it was her's and respected as such regardless of her presence in the room.. When she opened the book, she found it to be a study in the art of preserving flowers. Her one concession to her state of grace was to roll her eyes. The Malfoy rose garden was a sight that stole breath and inspired poetry; her circle of friends thought it to be her pride and joy. She did appreciate beauty and liked her flowers well enough. She maintained them with such care more for her image than as a passion, but even so, she preferred them alive to the not-quite dead state of preservation.

She didn't pace; she didn't tap her foot; she didn't click her nails against the arm of the chair. When the doors to this room opened, whoever entered would find a woman with her back straight and her ankles crossed, the picture of serenity enthralled with a book about flowers. Some days she merely sat and turned the pages, but today, the subject of her book was dull enough to let her mind wander while she read.

She wondered at what point during the years her training finally overrode the temptation to look up at the clock.

* * *

Some of Narcissa's earliest memories were of her mother and the hours they spent together. She hadn't known then how lucky she had been. It was unheard of for a Pureblood woman to feed or bathe her child, let alone take the time to entertain and educate them; these were menial duties performed by house elves and then private tutors, but Druella Black didn't care.

She had been enchanted by the idea of her first daughter long before Bellatrix was brought into the world. When Druella's own childhood caretaker had held out her wrinkled arms for the baby, she simply smiled and told the elf no.

The first time she appeared in public with little Bella in her arms, she shocked the wizarding community. She had always been striking but motherhood made her glow, and Bella was beautiful even then. Almost overnight the scandal turned into a trend and by the time Andromeda was born, only her aging elf was offended that she refused to pass the baby on.

Mothers aren't supposed to have favorites amongst their children and it shamed her that she did. She would have denied it if confronted, but Druella couldn't lie to herself. The world never knew about the two children that she'd lost between Andromeda and Narcissa; it was a loss that she spared her husband and one she never quite recovered from. Her Healer said it was nothing short of a miracle that she carried Narcissa as long as she did. It was another miracle that even three weeks premature, Narcissa thrived. For this reason, above all others, she held her last daughter closer to her heart than anything else on this side of the veil.

Some of Narcissa's fondest memories were of her mother and the hours they spent together.

She remembered sitting cross-legged on the charmed marble floor, waiting for her mother to join her after breakfast. When her mother had sat delicately on the floor with her, it was with her knees bent and her feet tucked together on the right side. Narcissa had hurried to imitate her.

"Already a lady, beloved. Do you want to learn more?"

Narcissa had looked up with stars in her eyes.

Druella pulled the ribbon from her daughter's hair and with a flick of her wand, transfigured it into a small chair.

"What color should it be? Blue?"

Narcissa giggled and shook her head.

"Pink. With sparkles!"

"Pink it is then, with diamonds."

Narcissa was exuberant and clapped her hands in glee when her chair was as she wished it to be.

Druella pulled the ribbon out of her own hair and transfigured a matching chair for herself. She rose from the floor with more grace than should have been allowed and offered her hands to pull her daughter up with her.

Narcissa's formal training started then. For hours that day and so many to follow, Narcissa learned to sit, stand, and walk like a lady.

* * *

The turn of the doorknob returned Narcissa to the present and the shuffle of footsteps told her that one person - a man - had intruded upon her privacy. It was only after she heard the click of the door shutting that she lifted her eyes from her book. She smiled and rose to greet Severus.

"Your attention to your surroundings leaves much to be desired, Cissa."

"I am surrounded by Malfoy Manor Severus. Between the centuries dedicated to the protection of the Manor and the wards that Lucius and I ourselves have set, to say nothing of our guest, I am quite sure there are not more secure surroundings anywhere in this world." She gestured grandly and turned a small circle so that the hem of her skirts flared out in a way that still delighted her.

"Point taken." He chuckled and crossed the room to take a seat on the leather sofa. Like Madam Pomfrey, Severus Snape was a different person for the Malfoys than he was for the rest of the world. Lucius and Narcissa were two of his first, two of his oldest, and two of his only friends - friends, at least as friendly as people could be when they fought on separate sides of the same war. He closed his eyes briefly to clear his thoughts. When he sat, he flinched slightly and took great care to stretch his muscles gently.

Narcissa took inventory of him as he took inventory of himself. When he finished quickly, she offered him a wry smile of relief at how well he had endured the Dark Lord's displeasure; they both knew it could have been so much worse. Her smile was fleeting though, and she moved to stand before the window. Behind closed doors in the company of a friend she loved like a brother, she took a risk and gambled with her life; she let go of the image she projected.

"I am afraid."

The change was dramatic, as though she were little more than a marionette whose strings had been cut. The proud set of her shoulders fell when she slumped. The purple under her eyes would have been lovely had it been painted on canvas instead of her skin. Her lips were pale from the strain it took her not to tremble and Severus could see the veins in her hands where her skin was stretched so tight it was nearly translucent. The energy it took to maintain such a glamour charm was astonishing, and the descent to her current state must have taken weeks. That had she maintained the glamour so long was nothing short of remarkable. That the need to maintain it would far exceed her physical capacity to do so chilled him to the core.

For a long moment he simply watched her and hated that suspicion scarred his mind far worse than any curse had scarred his body. If he could have chosen a sister it would have been Narcissa, but life had taught him that families could betray each other, too. He hadn't survived this long by trusting, and Severus wasn't ready to die before he'd had the chance to live.

"What is meant to happen, will," was all he had to offer. They were empty, overused words but he chose them carefully. If he were a man that still hoped for anything, he'd hope that he was seeing something that was there instead of something that he wanted to see. He'd hope that in being deliberately cryptic; she could understand that in those empty, overused words was a lifeline - the only one he could throw. He'd hope - but the hopes he didn't have were so convoluted and abstract the words got tangled inside his own head, and he didn't know what he'd hope for if he were a man that hoped at all. Hope was for fools and children and a few of the lucky ones - he was none of these.

"I wonder-"

"Don't." He was brusque.

She looked at him searchingly but he didn't meet her gaze. Instead he looked beyond her, out the window she had chosen.

The view really was magnificent.

* * *

Hello, Narcissa :) We will be seeing more of her as this story progresses. I'm rather liking playing in her head, too.

If you're confused about Severus' thoughts about hope, you're supposed to be. It's disorganized because his thoughts are disorganized, and Narcissa's revelations could mean approximately 483289 things and it's anybody's guess what they could mean if she's genuine, or if she's laying groundwork for a trap.

Thank you SO much to my reviewers - SocksForDobby, slytherinchick123, heartmom88, atomicmom, LK-HoGwArTs-hEaDgIrL, and of course my Anonymous reviewer :D

I'm naming you Nony, by the way. I hope you don't mind. No promises yet :D I need to get through this one first, and I have so much to say in it. :D

I should also note that this chapter was inspired/written/explored for atomicmom, who was curious about Severus' reaction... one thing lead to another, and then this chapter happened. Reviews really do make magic happen!

I hope you find it to your liking :)

Yours,  
**Threnody**


	16. Fifteen

Hermione didn't heal the way she was supposed to – the way they wanted her to. They told her to rest, and for the first few days she really did try. She cleaned the bath tub on her knees, scrubbing the porcelain so fiercely her shoulder ached; she enjoyed the pain. She took down the curtains and shook the dust from them, and then she swept the floor four times. She wiped the door frame and window sill with a soft cloth, and not once did she reach for her wand.

The first spell she tried was _Lumos_ while she waited on the deck for Ron and Harry to come home. When they did, it was dark, and Harry found her when he tripped over her body. The impact woke her, and she forced a smile and a laugh and told them it was rude to make a lady wait so long she fell asleep in her vigil. She clutched his hand with both of her own, and he hauled her up and into a twirl.

"Apologies. We come bearing gifts?" He tried; in the darkness of night he bought her lie.

"…Gifts?" She quirked an eyebrow, holding him perhaps just a moment too long as the world still spun from his twirl.

"Just one really, but it's a good one." Ron stole her from Harry and swung her around in his own celebration. She sagged and closed her eyes, and flung her arm around Harry's neck too in the hopes that three would be too many people to spin. Together they lifted her from the ground and locked arms beneath her legs. In this chair, they marched her through the doors and to makeshift hospital room. On a bed, shackled by metal and magic and made docile by pain, was one Draco Malfoy.

"You brought me a ferret?" She choked and stared and rubbed her eyes when merely blinking failed to remove the man from the room.

Even as she stared, he shifted just enough to see her face. She could barely see the blue of his eye from the swelling and the bruise, but he met her gaze and mouthed "_Mudblood_" before the effort was too much and he lost his hold consciousness. She narrowed her eyes but they were swept in the kitchen with the tide of people starved for good news. Ron produced a bottle of whiskey, and even Kingsley took his turn. They ate too many crackers and the last of the cheese, and though Mad Eye growled about constant vigilance, even he had to admit that the capture of the youngest Malfoy was a streak of luck.

The celebration lasted for far too long, but Hermione ignored the residual pain behind her eyes with nothing more than determination. It was a good night – a great night even, and she held on to the laughter knowing that as long as it lasted, it wouldn't last long enough.

She didn't try to use magic again for days. Instead she freshened the spare rooms and plucked weeds from the grass. She cleaned out the fridge and presented Kingsley with a list. She prepared to cut him off with her hands on her hips, ready to tell him that starving the army wouldn't help them win the war when he surprised her with a small pouch of Muggle pounds and told her to spend it wisely. She was unable to apparate; he arranged for a portkey and watched her leave with a small frown.

Arriving in an alley behind a small Muggle store, she shopped quickly, loading a cart with pasta, rice, canned produce, and protein powders. Nobody took notice of the brown-eyed girl with the stick twisted in her hair; she was quiet and polite and thanked the clerk as she left. He bid her good day without looking up, and she angled the cart into the alley and shoved the bags up her arms just as the portkey took her away.

She returned to a quiet house and surveyed her treasures. She arranged the cold and frozen foods almost artfully and stepped back to survey her work. The sight of food – of choices! – delighted her and with a stupid grin she climbed on top of the counter to put away the nonperishables. Humming something tuneless from a childhood memory, she alphabetized food items and the smile never left her face.

"Merlin, Mudblood, you really are worthless. You can't even use a wand to put things away?" He was leaning against the door with a careless grace. He wore the chains around his wrists like jewelry and on his body, the faded robes with ragged hems looked roguish.

"If it isn't the amazing bouncing ferret…How did it feel, Malfoy?" She turned so quickly she nearly fell off the counter; instead, she banged the tip of her wand into the cabinet and it slipped from her hair to rattle across the floor.

"A pick up line? Granger, everyone said you were the smartest witch in our year – don't you know by now that your existence is a flaw, a failing of the universe? Don't you –" The scorn in his voice was tangible, but she didn't care.

"How did it feel to fall so far from grace that Daddy didn't spare the effort to come save you? Nobody has even been to the battle scene to retrieve your body for burial, Malfoy. How does _that_ feel?" Her face was stained red in a blush that trickled behind her ears and dripped down her neck into the collar of her shirt but the tone of her voice could have frozen the equator. She wasn't used to drawing blood with her words, but he had taught her how to be cruel.

His eyes darkened and she could see the veins in his hands when he clenched them in to fists. He stepped closer to her and she could almost feel the heat of his anger against her skin. For a moment time stopped as he approached and for the very first time, she was afraid of him. She held her breath and looked into his eyes, trying to separate flecks of blue from the storm. The soft clink of the metal around his wrists startled them both, and he whirled away without speaking.

She exhaled roughly when he left and the sounds of the world rushed into her ears. A sneeze upstairs; the distinct pop of Apparation outside; the clunk of Mad Eye Moody as he paced within his room. It was too much – it was normal – it was disorienting because over it all, she heard his voice calling her worthless. After two weeks without magic, it struck a nerve.


	17. Chapter 17

**10 December 1998**

* * *

In the beginning, the friends she grew up with watched her with worried eyes and spoke gently and with encouragement. They told her to wait, to let herself heal, that the magic would come back and she would be fine. The days ran together like the blood from their wounds though, and as the weeks went by, she remained safe and whole at Grimmauld Place. She watched them with worried eyes as they began to ignore the gentle words of encouragement she spoke, and she waited for the dam to break.

The weight of the bandages in Hermione's arms was insubstantial, but her entire body trembled with the heaviness of Lavender's gaze when the next group of the injured arrived. She was used to physical pain – they all were – but she found the sting of rejection was different to the pain she had acclimated to when the other girl tossed her head and walked away, hands pressed to her abdomen instead of accepting Hermione's help. It chipped at her heart When Charlie sneered at her openly and told her to leave (because walking away was too much when the bones in his foot were crushed like sand) it felt like a piece of her soul had flaked away, and that pain nearly brought her to her knees. She retreated to her room and stared at the thin layer of dust that had accumulated on her wand, and she tried again to light her it. She remained in the darkness, and nonsensical as it was, she considered the stabbing behind her eyes as not-quite-failure and she was elated for three minutes; during the fourth her body seized and she was lost to nightmares where she killed men and women and children; or perhaps she only dreamed that she seized.

**13 December 1998**

* * *

It seemed as though the groups assigned to Harry's missions always came back alive, and this night was no different. The sound of bitter laughter rang throughout the house as he sat before Madam Pomfrey because the only injury he suffered was when Tonks tripped and caught his forearm with her nails. Later, tangled in the scents of cigarettes and whiskey, the soldier facade broke away and left a teenaged boy with crossed arms with a petulant scowl.

"Everyone else wakes up in the morning knowing it might be the last. I wake up knowing it could be someone else's last. This is because of me. It's not fair that everyone else risks their life while my biggest risk is a splinter from my wand."

"Right, mate, but you're the Chosen One and all. Aren't those missions better than no missions? At least you're doing _something_. That's better than nothing." Ron shrugged and squinted into the bottle to gauge the level of the liquid before taking the last drink and setting the bottle upside down.

Harry didn't respond, but Hermione's eyes burned holes through the night as she ignored the way that theirs' slanted towards her. Ron's words might have been conversational if she hadn't known he was deliberately prodding her for a response. She shivered and said nothing; it hadn't gone unnoticed that her coat wasn't enough to protect her from December. For the first weeks, one of the boys would cast something of a warming charm or pull her close enough to share body heat... but during the last, neither one had made either gesture; she felt their coldness so much more acutely than she did that of winter.

* * *

**18 December 1998**

* * *

The moon was still in the sky when the explosion tore her from a happier dream with a bang that stopped her heart. Everything and nothing roared in her ears and her vision fogged, and as she leapt out of bed she forgot her wand had failed her and grabbed it out of habit. The dust made her fingers slip as he half-fell down the stairs and lurched into the kitchen, but she had forgotten it had failed her and she held fiercely to the impotent stick of wood, clutching it like the lifeline it used to be.

Hermione wasn't alone; the sounds of battle in the kitchen had brought the entire Order and they stood together, suddenly united by the defense of their makeshift home in a way they hadn't been in far too long. In the middle was Harry Potter, surrounded by broken glass and singed wood, locked in a solitary battle against the world. Her eyes were wide as she took in the scene of a dangerous, angry boy who had given too much and lost too many, all too soon and too close together in his life; a broken man who knew he still had more to lose, but was unwilling to give his very best, very first friend; a human being who refused to accept an outcome he was powerless to change.

"WHERE IS HE, KINGSLEY?" A violet flash from his wand brought cans of food crashing at his feet.

"We don't know, Harry. His unit was captured. We are trying to find them, but-" Kingsley's voice was low and the ends of his words blended together with the beginning of the next a smooth tone that was meant to soothe, but the Minister of Magic was cut off by an inarticulate roar and the flight of the kettle that shattered into the space of wall behind his head.

"POTTER!" Kingsley's roar overpowered Harry's and in a moment he stepped forward into the younger man, invading his space and forcing Harry to change the angle of his wand lest it snap between their chests. In a daze, Hermione focused on the width of the black man's shoulders and the sheer force of his presence; and then he spoke again, quieter, but with the same echo of command.

"Calm yourself. This. Does. Not. Help. You _will_ return to your quarters and you will be accompanied. You _are not _permitted to leave the threshold of these doors. You will do nothing, and you _will not_ leave this house." The sound of his surname and the crisp taste of an order flicked something inside Harry's soldier soul, and he lowered his wand and blinked before he slumped against the wall.

"Granger, step forward. You will supervise-"

She saw Harry's spine straighten and his lips twist, and she cringed as the shade of his eyes return to a poisonous shade of green, and she braced herself because she knew this was the moment when the dam would break. She still wasn't ready when it did.

"No. If I need a _babysitter_ then fine. But not her. Anyone but her." The meaning of the words he spat paled in comparison to the ice in his voice. His eyes caught hers and he advanced, cold and cruel, needing to hurt her so that she would share in his pain. He didn't stop until she felt the wall against her shoulder blades and his breath against her face

"What would you do if I decided to waltz out of here? Cry? Tell me about rules and breaking them, and the greater good, and plans, and that _everything happens for a reason? _You couldn't do _shit_, Hermione. You're living here in safety and you're not doing a _fucking_ thing. Why in the hell did you even grab your wand? It's not like you can use it. You are fucking worthless." He spun around and launched himself back up the stairs, and she didn't breathe again until his door slammed shut so hard it made the windows rattle.

She didn't know the right words to speak and so she simply stood before them, shaking in pajamas that set too low on her hips and a shirt that pooled over her narrow shoulders and gaped at the neck. Not one person moved to her; they wouldn't even meet her eyes. She turned then and fled to the safety of her own room and collapsed against the door. Her breath was ragged and it hurt to expand her lungs; she took shorter breaths but found there wasn't enough air, and then she panicked because she couldn't breathe. Raw noises broke from her throat, the dust on her hands turned to mud from the tears she didn't know she was crying. She lost track of time, but the sun caught a glass shard from the mirror she broke not so long ago, and she was captivated by the face reflected back to her.

Her eyes were vacant; unfocused. Her hair had lost it's usual ferocity somewhere between last night and right now, and it hung past her shoulders in limp strands. Her cheeks were starting to hollow. Her clothes had fit a month ago, but each pound she lost was a new souvenir marking the decay of her relationships. It hadn't been intentional – she'd never been so vain as to try to lose weight, or wear makeup, or dress in clothes that highlighted the curve of her waist or the shape of her leg; she ate when she was hungry and she dressed in what was practical… but it began to take too much to go down to the kitchen; each time she lost her appetite because conversation stopped and the friends she had turned into people she knew. The food she managed to get down turned volatile in her stomach when the people she knew chose to bleed and break and almost die rather than accept a potion, a balm, a salve, or a bandage from her hands. She was willful, and it really seemed something of mind over matter to ignore the hollow ache in her stomach. The sharp twist that woke her up at night was harder to disregard though, and she would slip down the stairs to eat a couple pieces of bread in the dark, but that wasn't enough to maintain the weight. She blinked, and it was enough for her to avert her eyes.

She cradled the mirror against her side and used the doorknob to haul herself to her feet. She fell in the direction of her bed and crawled back between the sheets. It had been twenty-nine days since she cast the shield that saved their lives at the cost of her magic. She'd have done it again in a heartbeat for the price of magic but when she lay awake at night, she wondered if she would do it again at the cost of her friends. She didn't sleep that day, or that night. She wouldn't sleep for a long, long time.

* * *

When he first arrived, Draco had conjured a hammock between two trees in the back. Living in such close quarters was a challenge for him – even at Hogwarts he had only shared a room with three others. In the hammock, he could close his eyes and forget, just for a while, that his world hadn't changed in so many ways it was difficult to differentiate between up and down and left and right. Tonight wasn't different for him, except for the part where his eyes were open as he replayed the worst day in Hermione Granger's life.


End file.
